Florida Minimum Wage: Rates, Tip Credit, Increases

The first payroll correction I ever had to talk a founder through was a Florida minimum wage problem. He ran a small restaurant group near Tampa, he had come from a state that moves its rate on January 1, and he had quietly assumed Florida did the same. It does not. He was a week and a half into an old rate before anyone noticed.

Florida is unusual in two ways that matter to a small employer. Its minimum wage lives in the state constitution, put there by voters, not in a statute the legislature revises each session. And it changes on September 30, in the middle of a quarter, while most of the country changes on January 1.

This page covers one thing: what an employer in Florida has to pay, and when that number moves. For everything else that comes with running a team in the state, see the Florida HR compliance guide. I built FirstHR so a small team can keep track of dates like this without a dedicated HR person watching a calendar.

The Rate Right Now

Florida’s minimum wage is $14.00 per hour, and it took effect on September 30, 2025. The Florida Department of Commerce poster in circulation states that this rate holds through September 29, 2026, alongside a direct cash wage of at least $10.98 per hour for tipped employees in addition to their tips.

The rate comes from Section 24 of Article X of the Florida Constitution, which voters amended on November 3, 2020. The amendment set a rate of $10.00 on September 30, 2021 and a $1.00 step every September 30 after that until the wage reaches $15.00. Every increase since has been that same mechanical dollar.

One rate applies across the whole state. There is no separate figure for Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville or any other city, and no separate figure for large employers versus small ones. Whether an employee is covered at all follows the federal definition, because the Florida Minimum Wage Act extends the state rate only to people entitled to the federal minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The history is worth one line, because it shows the rate has not always been above the federal floor. Florida enacted its own minimum wage in 2005, and the Department of Commerce wage history shows the state defaulting back to the federal $7.25 between July 2009 and May 2011, when a court ruling pushed it to $7.31. From there it climbed on inflation adjustments until the 2020 amendment replaced that mechanism with fixed steps.

The Next Increase

The Florida minimum wage rises to $15.00 per hour on September 30, 2026, an increase of $1.00. That is the final fixed step in the schedule, and it is the last time an employer can plan a Florida wage increase from a number written on the face of the constitution.

What comes after is an inflation formula rather than a fixed step, and the timing shifts. The constitution directs the state to calculate an adjusted rate on September 30, 2027 by applying the change in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers over the twelve months before September 1. The adjusted rate is published and takes effect on the following January 1. Section 448.110 of the Florida Statutes, the implementing law, names the same January 1 effective date and specifies the South Region series of that index.

For budgeting, that gap is the useful part. An employer who staffs at or near the minimum gets one predictable jump in the autumn and then a long flat period before the indexing era starts. If you run payroll in several states, our roundup of minimum wage increases by state tracks the dates that do not line up with Florida’s.

Tipped Employees and the Tip Credit

Florida allows a tip credit, and it is fixed at $3.02 per hour. That means the direct cash wage for a tipped employee is $10.98 today and becomes $11.98 on September 30, 2026. The employee keeps their tips on top of that cash wage.

The number is frozen for a specific reason. The constitution permits employers to credit tips toward the minimum wage only up to the tip credit the Fair Labor Standards Act allowed in 2003, which was $3.02. Nothing indexes it. So as the Florida wage climbs, the tip credit stays put and the cash wage you owe rises dollar for dollar with the standard rate.

Two conditions travel with the credit. The employee has to meet the federal eligibility requirements for the tip credit, and tips plus the direct cash wage have to reach the full state minimum in every workweek, with the employer covering any shortfall. If you are new to the mechanics, our guide to the minimum wage for tipped employees walks through the notice and recordkeeping side.

Florida adds no tip pooling rules of its own, so the federal ones govern. That matters most for restaurants that fold back-of-house staff into a pool, a question our piece on tip pooling handles in detail.

City and County Rates

No Florida city or county sets a minimum wage for private employers. Section 218.077 of the Florida Statutes bars a county, municipality, district or other political subdivision from requiring an employer to pay a minimum wage other than the state or federal rate, or from mandating employment benefits beyond state and federal law.

That preemption has teeth. Miami Beach adopted a local ordinance and lost it in court, and no Florida local government has established a general private-sector rate since. If you operate in more than one Florida county, the wage side of your payroll setup is identical everywhere.

Two carve-outs remain in the statute, and a third is closing. A political subdivision may still set pay for its own employees, and it may still attach a wage condition to a direct tax abatement or subsidy it grants. The third route, attaching wage conditions to its purchasing and contracting, is removed by a 2024 amendment to section 218.077 that takes effect on September 30, 2026. The same act provides that contracts entered into before that date are not impaired.

Miami-Dade County shows what that looks like in practice. Its published living wage notice for October 1, 2026 through September 30, 2027 sets $18.40 per hour with qualifying health benefits worth at least $4.13 per hour, or $22.53 per hour without them, and the notice itself says the rate reaches only employees on county service contracts awarded before September 30, 2026. If you bid on county work in Florida, read the contract. If you do not, none of this touches your payroll.

Industry Carve-Outs

Florida creates no industry rate of its own. There is no fast food wage council, no healthcare minimum, no agricultural rate and no large-employer tier. Every covered employee in every industry is owed the same $14.00, rising to $15.00.

What does vary is coverage. Section 448.110 of the Florida Statutes extends the state minimum wage only to individuals entitled to the federal minimum wage, and it incorporates the federal exemption and special certificate provisions. So the exemptions that apply in Florida are the federal ones, and an employee who is exempt federally is outside the state minimum too.

Agriculture is the one place a Florida employer routinely pays something other than the state rate, and it goes up, not down. Employers hiring under the H-2A visa program owe the Adverse Effect Wage Rate that the US Department of Labor publishes by state. The Office of Foreign Labor Certification lists Florida at $16.23 per hour for non-range occupations, effective December 30, 2024, which is well above both the state and federal minimums.

Salaried staff are the other place employers get this wrong. A salary does not by itself remove someone from the minimum wage, and Florida applies the federal duties and salary tests without adding its own. Our explainer on exempt versus non-exempt classification is the place to check a borderline role before you assume it is outside the rate.

Youth and Training Wages

Florida sets no youth wage and no training wage. There is no state provision that lets an employer pay a teenager, a new hire or a trainee less than the full state minimum simply because of age or tenure.

The subminimum routes that do exist all come from federal law and all require paperwork. Section 448.110 pulls in the federal special certificate provisions, which cover student-learners in vocational programs, certain full-time students in retail, service, agriculture and higher education, and workers whose earning capacity is impaired. Each of those requires a certificate issued by the US Department of Labor before the lower rate can be paid.

The federal youth opportunity wage of $4.25 per hour, available for employees under 20 during their first 90 consecutive calendar days, is a genuine grey area in Florida. It sits in a section of federal law that the Florida statute does not name, and no Florida agency publishes guidance on whether it can be paid instead of the higher state rate. There is no administrative complaint process to ask, either, because the state minimum wage is enforced through private lawsuits and the Attorney General rather than a wage and hour agency. Paying the state rate to workers under 20 is the course that carries no risk.

The legislature looked at loosening this and did not. A bill in the most recent session would have let students in work-study, internship and preapprenticeship programs sign a waiver and take the federal rate instead of the state rate, capped at 252 days or two semesters. It died in the House Commerce Committee on March 13, 2026, so nothing changed. Separately, hour and occupation limits for minors are a different body of law, covered in our guide to child labor laws.

The Poster Requirement

Every employer who must pay the Florida minimum wage has to display a minimum wage notice in a conspicuous and accessible place in each establishment where those employees work. That comes from section 448.109 of the Florida Statutes, and it applies regardless of headcount.

The Florida Department of Commerce publishes the poster free in English, Spanish and Creole on its minimum wage page, along with a plain-language announcement of the current rate and a wage history table. Each poster names the rate and the exact period it covers, which is what makes the swap date obvious. The version in circulation as of the last-checked date above covers September 30, 2025 through September 29, 2026, and the replacement carrying $15.00 had not yet been posted.

The state poster is not the only one. Florida employers also display the federal Fair Labor Standards Act minimum wage poster from the US Department of Labor, and several other state and federal notices depending on headcount. Our overview of workplace posters covers the wider set.

Florida and the Federal Rate

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour and has not moved since July 24, 2009. Florida sits $6.75 above it today and will sit $7.75 above it once the final step lands, so the state rate is the one you pay. When a state rate and the federal rate both apply, the employee gets the higher of the two.

The link runs deeper than a comparison. Florida borrows the federal definitions of employer, employee and wage, borrows the federal exemptions and certificate rules, and freezes its tip credit at a federal figure from 2003. If Congress ever raised the federal floor above $15.00, the federal number would simply take over in Florida. For the national picture, including which states still sit at the federal floor, see our guide to minimum wage by state.

One consequence of the federal link is worth naming. Overtime in Florida is entirely federal, calculated at time and a half the regular rate, which means a minimum wage increase raises overtime cost at the same moment it raises base cost. Our explainer on overtime rules covers how the regular rate is built.

What to Do When the Rate Rises

The work on an increase date is small and entirely mechanical, and it goes wrong mainly when nobody owns it. Here is the sequence I give clients for a September 30 change.

The notice step deserves one extra note. Florida gives an employee who believes they were underpaid a required pre-suit step: written notice identifying the wage claimed, the dates and hours, and the total shortfall, followed by 15 calendar days for the employer to pay or resolve it. That window is a genuine chance to fix a mistake cheaply, and employers who keep tidy payroll records use it well.

If nobody misses it, the failure mode is the expensive one. A successful claim recovers the unpaid wages plus an equal amount as liquidated damages, along with attorney fees and costs, and a willful violation carries a $1,000 fine per violation payable to the state. The limitations period is four years, or five for willful violations, which is long enough that a rate change missed in one September can still be live several years later.

Florida has no state wage and hour agency to referee any of this. Enforcement runs through the courts and the Attorney General, which is exactly why the cheap prevention is a calendar reminder in August. Employers who want the payroll mechanics handled alongside the compliance calendar can compare options in our roundup of Florida payroll services.

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