Delaware Minimum Wage: Rate, Tip Credit, and Exemptions

A shop owner in Dover told me she paid new hires fifty cents under the state rate for their first three months. She had read that Delaware allowed a training wage, she had built it into her offer letters, and she had been running it that way for two years. Delaware deleted that provision from its statute in 2021. Every one of those first-90-day hires had been underpaid.

That is the shape of the Delaware problem. The rate itself is the simplest in the region: one number, no county rates, no employer size tiers, no annual indexing. The traps are the two reduced rates that used to exist and no longer do, and a tipped cash wage that has not moved since 1996 while the base rate nearly doubled around it.

So this page is a rate sheet, not an essay. Every figure below comes from the Delaware Department of Labor or from the Delaware Code, with the effective date attached. For sick leave, paid family leave, final paychecks, and the rest of employing people here, use the Delaware HR compliance guide.

What You Owe Per Hour Right Now

The Delaware minimum wage is $15.00 an hour for every employer in the state, and it has been since January 1, 2025. There is no small employer rate, no county rate, and no phase-in still running. The Office of Wage and Hour Enforcement states the figure plainly on its wage and hour page, and the Department repeats it in the 2026 Employer Guide to Compliance and Workforce Protections.

That $15.00 is the last rung of a four-step ladder. Senate Bill 15, approved July 19, 2021 and published as 83 Del. Laws c. 81, rewrote the schedule in Section 902(a) of Title 19 and set the dates below. Each step landed on January 1, and the last one has now been in force for more than a year and a half.

One warning about sourcing. Delaware moved its labor content to a new site, and some pages in the employer knowledge base still answer the current rate question with $13.25, the figure that ran through calendar 2024. The department poster revised on January 15, 2025 and the 2026 employer guide both show $15.00. Check the revision date on any state document before you set payroll from it.

When the Next Increase Lands

No increase to the Delaware minimum wage is scheduled. Section 902(a) of Title 19 lists five rates, ends at $15.00 effective January 1, 2025, and adds nothing after it. Delaware attached no consumer price index escalator, so the number does not drift upward on its own the way it does in several neighboring states.

Two things could move it. The first is ordinary legislation: the General Assembly passes a bill, the Governor signs it, and a new schedule replaces the current one. The second is quieter and sits in the same subsection. If a federal minimum wage is established above the state minimum wage, Delaware law says the state rate becomes equal in amount to the federal rate. A federal increase past $15.00 would raise the Delaware floor without a single vote in Dover.

Practically, a Delaware employer gets no calendar to plan against and no annual budget event. That is easier than tracking an index, and riskier, because a change arrives on whatever timeline the bill sets rather than on a predictable January date. Our state increase tracker covers what the other jurisdictions are doing on the same question.

Tipped Cash Wage and the Tip Credit

Delaware allows a tip credit. You must pay a tipped employee at least $2.23 an hour in cash, and the maximum credit is the arithmetic gap between that and the full rate: $12.77 an hour. A tipped employee is a worker in an occupation where workers customarily and regularly receive more than $30 a month in tips, under Section 902(c)(1) of Title 19.

The $2.23 has not changed since October 1, 1996, according to the department wage and hour poster. That single fact explains most Delaware tip credit disputes. When the base rate was $8.25 the credit was $6.02; at $15.00 it is $12.77, so more than four fifths of the wage now rides on tips actually landing. The employer must be able to prove the employee received the balance of the full minimum rate in tips, and pays the difference in cash whenever a workweek falls short.

Delaware also polices the money around the tip more tightly than most states. A gratuity is the sole property of the primary direct service employee, an employer may not require or coerce a pooling arrangement, and where a pool exists it may not exceed 15 percent of the primary direct service employee gratuities. The tip pooling rules differ enough state to state that a policy copied from another location is usually wrong here.

Service charges get their own rule. An obligatory sum added to the bill belongs to the primary direct service employee unless the menu, placard, or statement of charges carries clear and conspicuous notice that management keeps all or part of it, in at least 18 point type on a placard or 10 point elsewhere. The weekly make-up arithmetic is the same everywhere, and the tipped wage guide walks through it.

City and County Rates

No Delaware city or county sets its own minimum wage. There is one statewide figure and it applies in New Castle, Kent, and Sussex Counties and in every municipality, so an employer in Wilmington and an employer in Georgetown owe the same $15.00. Nothing about work location changes the rate, which makes multi-site and remote payroll far simpler here than across the state line.

One higher floor does exist, and it follows public money rather than geography. The prevailing wage law at 29 Del. C. 6960 sets trade rates on construction funded in whole or part by the State or a subdivision, once the project costs more than $500,000 for new construction or more than $45,000 for renovation, repair, or alteration. Those rates come from an annual survey and run well above the minimum wage for most trades.

Worth noting for planning: the Delaware Minimum Wage Act contains no express clause preempting local wage ordinances, unlike some states that bar them outright. Nothing local exists today, so there is nothing to track. A city or county could in principle act, which is a reason to keep this page on an annual review rather than assuming the answer is permanent.

Exemptions and Industry Carve-Outs

Delaware sets no industry-specific minimum wage. There is no fast food rate, no healthcare rate, and no agricultural rate. The carve-outs in this state run the other direction: instead of lifting the floor for one sector, Section 901(3) of the Delaware Minimum Wage Act lifts certain categories out of the definition of employee, so the statute never reaches them at all.

Three of those deserve a second look. Agriculture is excluded outright, which is broader than the federal treatment and catches farm operations that would be covered under federal law. Domestic service in or about a private home is excluded, so household employers are outside the state act. The executive, administrative, and professional exclusion is a state law category that does not automatically match the federal duties tests, and an employee can fail one and pass the other.

Fast food gets asked about constantly because of coverage from other states. Delaware has nothing of the kind: a quick-service restaurant in Newark pays the same $15.00 as the hardware store next door, and the fast food wage rules in national headlines belong to California. Healthcare is the same story, with no state rate for direct care or home care workers written into the wage statute.

An exemption from Delaware law is not an exemption from federal law. The Fair Labor Standards Act runs its own coverage tests, and an employee individually covered by it is owed the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour even when the state act does not apply. That makes $7.25 the operative floor in exactly the situations where employers assume there is none.

Youth and Training Wage

Delaware has neither a youth wage nor a training wage. Both were repealed. House Bill 88, enacted as 83 Del. Laws c. 215 and approved September 30, 2021, struck the training wage that had let employers pay adults fifty cents under the minimum during their first 90 days, and struck the youth wage that had allowed the same discount for employees under 18. Subsection 902(e) now reads as repealed in the code.

The result is flat. A 16 year old on their first shift earns $15.00, and so does a 40 year old in week one. Any offer letter, handbook, or payroll setting that still holds a 90-day rate or an under-18 rate has been wrong since the repeal took effect 90 days after enactment. Section 906 of Title 19 lets the Department authorize lower rates for learners and apprentices by regulation, but that is a departmental process, not something an employer can apply on its own.

Delaware regulates minors hard in other ways. The minimum age for employment is 14, every employed minor under 18 needs a work permit that the employer keeps on file, and a new permit is required when the employer changes. Workers aged 14 and 15 may not work before 7:00 a.m. or after 7:00 p.m., extended to 9:00 p.m. from June 1 through Labor Day, and are capped at four hours on a school day. Our guide to child labor rules covers the federal layer that sits underneath.

Poster Requirements

Every Delaware employer must post a Department approved summary of the Minimum Wage Act in a conspicuous and accessible location where employees normally pass, under Section 908 of Title 19. The Department furnishes copies free on request. Employers of more than three employees carry a second posting duty under Section 1108(5), covering the Wage Payment and Collection chapter.

In practice both are satisfied by the Delaware Wage and Hour Law poster, a single sheet that carries the rate history, the $2.23 tipped cash wage, the exemption list, break rules, child labor limits, and the wage theft penalties. The current version is dated January 15, 2025 and downloads free from the wage and hour resources page in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole.

Placement is part of the requirement. A break room, a spot beside the time clock, or another common area meets the standard; a locked office or a manager binder does not. Failing to post is its own violation under Section 910 of Title 19, carrying a civil penalty of $1,000 to $5,000, separate from any wages owed. The department also expects three years of payroll records kept in or about the place of business, which our payroll recordkeeping guide breaks down.

How Delaware Sits Against the Federal Rate

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and has not moved since July 24, 2009, as the US Department of Labor state wage tables show. Delaware sits $7.75 above it. Where both laws cover an employee, the higher rate wins, so $7.25 is not a number a Delaware employer pays on an ordinary shift.

Delaware wrote the relationship into its own statute rather than leaving it to federal supremacy. Section 902(a) says that upon the establishment of a federal minimum wage above the state minimum wage, the Delaware rate becomes equal in amount to the federal rate. If Congress ever raises the national floor past $15.00, Delaware follows automatically on the federal effective date.

The tipped side runs the same way with a smaller gap. The federal cash wage for tipped employees is $2.13 and Delaware requires $2.23, so the state figure controls and a payroll system defaulted to the federal number underpays by ten cents an hour. The $7.25 rate still matters in one place: employees carved out of the state act who remain individually covered by federal law, which the federal minimum wage guide works through in detail.

What to Do the Day a Rate Rises

A rate change is a payroll project, not a memo. Delaware gives you no annual calendar, so the trigger will be a new state bill or a federal increase, and both can arrive with short notice. Run the work in this order.

The step employers skip is the last one. A poster showing a stale rate is the first thing an investigator photographs, and it turns a payroll question into a documented notice failure worth $1,000 to $5,000 on its own. Keeping rate changes, written notices, and employee acknowledgments together in one system is exactly the sort of small recurring task FirstHR was built to hold for teams without a dedicated HR person.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Delaware minimum wage right now?

It is $15.00 an hour for every employer, with no size test and no county variation, effective January 1, 2025. That was the final step of the schedule Senate Bill 15 wrote into the Delaware Code in 2021. Some older state pages still answer with $13.25, the rate that ran through calendar 2024, so check the revision date on whatever document you are reading.

Is the Delaware minimum wage going up?

Nothing is scheduled. The statute ends at $15.00 and carries no inflation index, so the state rate changes only when the General Assembly passes a bill. There is one automatic trigger: Delaware law says that if a federal minimum wage is set above the state figure, the Delaware rate becomes equal to the federal one without further legislation.

How much can I take as a tip credit?

Up to $12.77 an hour, the gap between the $2.23 cash wage and the $15.00 rate. The $2.23 has not changed since 1996, so the credit grew every time the base rate rose. It only holds if tips actually close the gap in that workweek; when they do not, you pay the difference in cash.

Can I pay a teenager or a brand new hire less?

No. Delaware repealed the training wage for the first 90 days and the youth wage for employees under 18 in 2021, and the statute now shows that subsection as repealed. A 16 year old on day one earns $15.00. Work permits, minimum age, and hour limits still apply to minors, but they govern when a minor may work, not how little you may pay.

Does any Delaware city or county have its own rate?

No. One figure covers New Castle, Kent, and Sussex Counties and every municipality inside them. The one wage floor that sits above $15.00 is the prevailing wage on state funded construction, which attaches to public money rather than to a location and applies over $500,000 for new construction or $45,000 for renovation, repair, or alteration.

Which poster do I have to hang?

The Delaware Wage and Hour Law poster, in a place accessible to employees and where they normally pass. Two statutes require posting, and the single department sheet satisfies both. It downloads free from the Delaware Department of Labor in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. Failing to post carries a civil penalty of $1,000 to $5,000 on its own.

My workers are agricultural. Are they exempt?

They fall outside the Delaware Minimum Wage Act, which is narrower than being outside every wage law. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act runs separate coverage tests, and an employee covered by it is still owed $7.25 an hour. Domestic service in a private home and outside commission paid salespeople sit in the same position. Have a Delaware employment attorney confirm the analysis before relying on it.