Connecticut Minimum Wage: Rates, Tip Credit, Dates

The first January I ran payroll in a state that indexes its minimum wage, I heard about the increase from an employee rather than from my own calendar. She had checked the math on her first check of the year before I had. That conversation cost me more goodwill than the raise cost in payroll.

Connecticut is one of those states. The rate moves on its own every January, and the statute does not require the new amount to be announced until the middle of October. The tipped half of the schedule trips up restaurant owners year after year, because the number you pay in cash does not change at all.

This page gives you the numbers that set Connecticut payroll (the state rate, the two tipped cash wages and the youth rate) and says where each one came from. It stays narrow on purpose. For sick leave, harassment training, final paychecks and the rest of the state picture, the Connecticut HR compliance guide is the place to go.

What Connecticut Employers Must Pay Per Hour

The Connecticut minimum wage is $17.48 per hour, effective January 1, 2027 ($16.94 through December 31, 2026). Governor Lamont announced the figure in August 2026. It applies in every city and town, to every industry, at every headcount.

How Connecticut arrives at that number is fairly new. The state spent six years climbing a schedule written into the statute, from $10.10 to $15.00, and then switched to annual indexing. The last legislated step landed on June 1, 2023. Every rate since then has come out of a formula tied to a federal wage index rather than a bill.

Each indexed step so far has added between 54 and 69 cents an hour, and the 2027 step is the smallest of the four. It reflects a 3.2 percent rise in the employment cost index over the twelve months ending June 30, 2026. Applied to the 2026 rate of $16.94, that works out to 54 cents.

When the Rate Changes Next

The next adjustment takes effect on January 1, 2027, and the amount is already published: $17.48 per hour. The mechanism sits in Chapter 558 of the General Statutes, at section 31-58(i)(1), and it runs on the same calendar every year.

The size of the increase is decided before it is announced. It equals the percentage change in the employment cost index for wages and salaries for all civilian workers, measured over the twelve months ending June 30 of the preceding year.

The statute sets October 15 as the date the Labor Commissioner announces the new rate. The underlying index is public well before then, which is how the Governor could release the 2027 figure in August 2026.

If you employ people in more than one state, annual indexed increases now reach 14 states plus the District of Columbia, and they do not all land on January 1.

Tipped Employees and the Connecticut Tip Credit

Connecticut allows a tip credit only in the hotel and restaurant industry, and it sets two different cash wages inside it. The credit is the part of the minimum wage that tips are allowed to cover.

Section 31-60(d)(3) of the General Statutes fixes the employer share at $6.38 per hour for tipped staff other than bartenders, and at $8.23 per hour for bartenders who customarily and regularly receive gratuities.

Those two numbers are written into the statute as fixed dollar amounts, not as percentages, and that is the detail to remember. When the state rate rises, the cash wage does not move at all. The entire increase lands on the tip credit, which means it lands on the tips your staff have to earn before you are square.

The two cash wages match the US Department of Labor table of minimum wages for tipped employees. Section 31-60(d) sets the credit as the gap between each cash wage and the minimum fair wage, which is the name the statute uses for the state minimum wage.

Cash plus tips has to reach $17.48 for every hour worked. If tips fall short in a given workweek, you owe the shortfall in cash for that week, not averaged across the month.

Tips belong to the employee, and a valid tip pool only moves them between employees rather than into the business.

City and Town Minimum Wage Rates in Connecticut

There are none. Connecticut sets one statewide minimum fair wage and no city, town or county publishes its own general minimum wage for private employers. This is the short section on this page, and it should be, because the honest answer runs to one line.

That last row is not a general wage floor. Prevailing wage is a trade by trade rate that reaches you only through a contract with the state or a municipality under section 31-53, so read the contract terms before you take on a public works job.

Industry Carve-Outs: Fast Food, Healthcare, Agriculture

Connecticut has no fast food rate, no healthcare rate and no separate adult agricultural rate. One number covers every industry. Instead of lower industry rates, the statute has a list of people who fall outside its definition of employee, and one restaurant rule that raises pay rather than lowering it.

The seventh day rule comes from the US Department of Labor summary of Connecticut law. It is easy to miss because it is not a minimum wage question at all: in a restaurant or hotel restaurant, work on the seventh consecutive day carries premium pay at one and a half times the minimum rate.

The exclusions in section 31-58(e) are worth reading once if your business is seasonal or domestic in character, because the people it lists do not count as employees under the statute.

The categories include camps and resorts open no more than six months a year, domestic service in a private home that falls outside the federal definition of domestic service employment, and babysitters. Outside salespeople, head residents and resident assistants at a college, and staff at a nonprofit theater that operates seven months or less in a calendar year are excluded too.

Youth, Minor, and Training Wages

Connecticut has one youth rate and no adult training wage. Under section 31-58(i)(5), employees under 18 who are not emancipated minors must be paid at least 85 percent of the minimum fair wage for their first 90 days of employment, or $10.10 per hour, whichever is greater, then the full rate after that.

At $17.48, the 85 percent floor works out to about $14.86 per hour, so the $10.10 alternative written into the statute no longer does any work. The statute states a percentage rather than a published dollar figure, so recompute it each January instead of carrying forward the figure you used before.

Two narrower minor rates sit alongside it. Section 31-58a puts minors aged 16 to 18 employed by the state or a political subdivision, such as a town or city, at 85 percent of the minimum fair wage.

The same section covers agricultural workers aged 14 to 18. They get 85 percent of the minimum fair wage, dropping to 70 percent where the employer did not employ eight or more workers at the same time in the preceding calendar year.

For adults there is no equivalent. Section 31-60(b) lets the Labor Commissioner write regulations covering learners and apprentices, but there is no general probationary or training rate that a small business can apply to an adult new hire. Hours, permits and the rest of the rules for teenage staff sit in the child labor rules, which are a separate compliance track from the wage itself.

The Minimum Wage Poster Requirement

Section 31-66 of the General Statutes requires every covered employer to keep a copy of the applicable minimum fair wage order and the Labor Commissioner regulations posted at the place of employment, where employees can read it easily. The state supplies copies to employers free of charge on request.

The same section carries the recordkeeping rule that sits behind it. You keep a true and accurate record of the hours worked by and the wages paid to each employee for three years, at the place of employment, open to inspection at any reasonable time. Failure to keep those records, or to produce them on request, is its own violation under section 31-69.

Current editions of the wage orders and every other required state posting come free from the Connecticut Department of Labor. Because the posted order carries the rate, this is one of the postings that has to be swapped every January rather than checked once at opening.

How the Connecticut Rate Relates to the Federal Floor

The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 per hour since July 24, 2009. Connecticut sits $10.23 above it, so the state rate is simply the number you pay. Where a state rate exceeds the federal rate, the employer pays the higher one, and the federal figure never comes into play in practice.

Connecticut also wrote a safeguard into the statute so that its rate can never fall behind the federal one. Section 31-58(i)(2) provides that the minimum fair wage is never less than one half of one percent above the highest federal minimum wage, rounded to the nearest cent. Section 31-58(i)(4) then makes the increase automatic and same day if Congress ever raises the federal rate.

Federal law still governs plenty of what surrounds the rate, including overtime, hours worked, recordkeeping and the notice rules attached to a tip credit.

What to Do When a Rate Rises

Treat a rate change as a payroll project with several moving parts rather than one field to edit. The hourly rate is the visible one. The overtime rate, the tipped math, the written wage information you gave people and the posted order all move with it.

Keep the calculation itself. Section 31-68 lets an employee recover twice the unpaid wages plus costs and attorney fees, and the doubling drops to single damages only where the employer establishes a good faith belief that the underpayment complied with the law. A dated worksheet is what that defense looks like in practice.

If tracking who sits at which rate across a growing hourly team is the part that keeps slipping, that is the kind of thing FirstHR was built to hold. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider, so it keeps the employee record straight and hands your payroll process a clean set of facts.

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