New York Minimum Wage: Rates by Region and Industry

The first New York payroll question I got badly wrong involved a company with an office in White Plains and a small warehouse in Newburgh. Same employer, same job title, two legal minimums about forty miles apart. The founder had raised everyone to one number and assumed she was being generous.

She was, in Newburgh, which sits on the upstate rate. In White Plains, on the Westchester rate, the same number barely cleared the floor, and her budget for the next two hires there assumed headroom that only existed upstate. Nobody was underpaid that time. The reverse mistake, one number set against the upstate floor and paid downstate, is the one that produces a wage claim.

New York does not have one minimum wage. It has two, split by county line, plus a separate cash wage for tipped hospitality staff and a higher floor for home care aides. Below you will find each rate, who it covers, the posters that go with it, and what to do when it changes, so every hour you pay clears the right floor.

The Current New York Rates

New York’s minimum wage is $17.00 per hour downstate and $16.00 per hour in the rest of the state, both effective January 1, 2026. The downstate region is New York City plus Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties. Every other county is on the $16.00 figure that the New York State Department of Labor calls the remainder of New York State.

There is no employer size tier anymore. New York City ran separate large employer and small employer rates through 2019; today one rate applies to every employer in the city regardless of headcount. There is also no small business exception, no seasonal rate, and no separate figure for part time staff.

What decides which rate you owe is where the work is physically performed. A delivery driver, a mobile technician, a home health visit, and a job site crew can all move between regions inside a single week. Payroll registration and office address do not matter here; the county the hours happen in does.

The ladder above comes from the Department of Labor history of the minimum wage in New York State and from the schedule written into Labor Law section 652. Two details are worth noticing. Downstate stood still through 2022 and 2023 after hitting $15.00, and the recent steps have been a flat fifty cents a year rather than a percentage.

The counties in the lower Hudson Valley trip people up. Rockland, Putnam, Orange, and Dutchess are all on the $16.00 rate despite sitting inside the New York metro commute. The statute draws the line at Westchester, not at the edge of the commuter belt.

When the Rate Changes Next

The next increase takes effect January 1, 2027, and the amount has not been published yet. That one matters more than the increases before it, because it is the first that comes from a formula rather than from a number written into the statute. The fixed schedule in Labor Law section 652 ends with the January 1, 2026 step.

From there the rate is indexed to inflation. The statute ties the annual adjustment to the non seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index for Northeast Region urban wage earners and clerical workers, averaged over the three most recent consecutive twelve month periods running from August through July. In plain terms, each increase follows the average inflation rate in the Northeast over the past three years.

The statute also builds in an off ramp. An increase can be suspended if the index reading is negative, if the state unemployment rate rises by half a percentage point or more, or if New York non farm employment declines over the measured months. A suspension cannot run more than two consecutive years.

The Commissioner of Labor must publish the adjusted rates no later than October 1 each year, and they apply to the first pay period covering January 1. That gives a small business a three month planning window every autumn. Budget in the fall from the published number, not before it.

Tipped Workers and the Tip Credit

New York allows a tip credit, but only in the hospitality industry. A restaurant or hotel may satisfy the minimum wage by combining a cash wage with a credit for tips the employee actually receives. The Department of Labor tipped worker rates set both halves of that arithmetic, and they run from January 1 through December 31 each year.

Two categories carry different numbers. A food service worker is a front of house employee who regularly receives tips, such as a server or a bartender. A service employee is a tipped worker who is not a food service worker, such as a hotel bellhop or a coat check attendant.

The credit is conditional, and this is where employers lose money after the fact. Under the Hospitality Industry Wage Order, no tip credit may be taken on a day when a tipped worker spends two hours or more, or more than twenty percent of the shift, whichever is less, on non tipped duties. Prep shifts, deep cleans, and stock deliveries all count against that limit.

Service employees carry a second condition that food service workers do not. Their tip credit is available only in a week when tips average at least a set hourly threshold. For 2026 that threshold is $9.55 downstate and $9.00 upstate in resort hotels, and $3.65 downstate and $3.40 upstate in restaurants and all year hotels.

A slow week can therefore convert a service employee into a full minimum wage employee retroactively. That is why tip records have to be kept and tested weekly rather than reconciled at year end, and why a manager who averages a quarter is averaging the wrong period.

Outside hospitality the answer is simple: no tip credit at all. The building service industry does not allow one. The Miscellaneous Industries Wage Order, which covers everything except hospitality, farm work, and building service, states that tips are not part of the minimum wage on or after December 31, 2020.

Overtime for a tipped worker is one more piece of arithmetic that trips up new operators. Take the regular rate before the tip credit is subtracted, multiply by one and one half, then subtract the tip credit. The wage order says explicitly that subtracting the credit first and multiplying the reduced cash wage is a violation.

City and County Rates in New York

No city or county in New York sets its own minimum wage. There is no New York City ordinance, no Buffalo ordinance, and no county law that raises the floor above the state figure. The geography is built into the state statute instead, which is exactly why New York publishes two rates rather than one.

That makes New York simpler to run than a state with a patchwork of municipal ordinances. It also makes the county line the single thing you have to get right. Below is how the state divides.

If you are looking up a single city, the county it sits in settles the rate. Yonkers, White Plains, and New Rochelle are in Westchester, so they are on $17.00. Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany are upstate, so they are on $16.00. The table covers the places employers ask about most.

Long Island is the label that causes the most confusion, because it is geography rather than a legal region. Nassau and Suffolk are both on the higher rate, and the state pairs them with Westchester in every published table. Queens and Brooklyn sit on the same island but are counted as New York City.

There is one genuine location specific exception, and it is not municipal. Under the Healthy Terminals Act, covered airport workers at John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, and at sites that prepare or deliver food for flights leaving either airport, are entitled to a higher floor than the general state minimum.

Industry Rates and Carve Outs

New York sets its pay rules through industry wage orders, the regulations the state writes sector by sector. The general rate is the default, a handful of sectors have orders of their own, and only one of those sectors has a higher hourly minimum today: home care.

Fast food no longer has a separate number. The Department of Labor fast food FAQ states that as of January 1, 2025, fast food worker rates are the same as the rates for other non tipped employees covered by the Hospitality Industry Wage Order.

Fast food coverage still matters for other rules, and the definition reaches further than owners expect. An establishment counts if it primarily serves food or drink, offers limited service where customers order and pay before eating, and belongs to a chain of thirty or more locations, counting franchises and individually owned locations tied to the brand. The chain can be statewide or national.

Home care is the real carve out. Home care aides have a minimum wage of $19.65 per hour for work performed in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County, and $18.65 in the remainder of the state, effective January 1, 2026. That is $2.65 above the general rate in both regions.

Nail salons deserve a specific mention because the industry used to run on tip allowances. A nail salon is a miscellaneous industry, so the December 31, 2020 cut off applies: the employer pays the full applicable minimum wage and cannot take any tip credit. Tips are on top of the hourly rate, and the employer may not keep or retain any part of them.

Agriculture is fully covered at the general rate under the Farm Workers wage order, CR 190. That order permits meal and lodging allowances against the minimum wage, but it contains no tip allowance at all, and it has had no youth rate since December 31, 2013.

The other orders follow the same pattern. Building service sits under CR 141, miscellaneous industries under CR 142, and non profit institutions under either CR 142-3 or CR 143 depending on whether the organization elected out of a wage order.

Building service has one wrinkle of its own. Under CR 141, janitors in residential buildings are paid a weekly rate per apartment unit, $11.35 per unit downstate and $10.70 upstate for 2026, instead of the hourly minimum that covers every other building service employee.

Youth, Student, and Training Wages

There is no youth wage and no training wage in New York. The Department of Labor answers the question in a single line in its minimum wage FAQ: there is no lower wage rate established for trainees or youth. A sixteen year old on a first shift is owed the same hourly floor as a twenty year veteran, from hour one.

That is a meaningful difference from states that permit a ninety day training rate or a percentage rate for minors. In New York, a probationary period can shape review timing and benefits eligibility, but it cannot shape the hourly rate.

The exemptions that do exist are narrow, and they sit outside the wage scale rather than below it. The Department of Labor lists them in its FAQ for non profits and children’s camps. Each one takes a category of worker out of coverage entirely instead of setting a lower hourly floor, so it works differently from a training wage in practice.

The camp counselor exemption is the one most likely to apply to a small business, and its conditions are strict. Under the Miscellaneous Industries Wage Order, it covers staff whose duties primarily relate to guidance, instruction, supervision, and care of campers, and it excludes any establishment open more than seventeen consecutive weeks a year. A year round after school program is not a children’s camp.

Hiring a minor in New York brings obligations well beyond the hourly rate: working papers, restricted hours during the school year, and prohibited occupations. The wage is the simple part of that list, and it is the only part where a sixteen year old is treated exactly like everyone else.

Posting and Notice Requirements

New York requires a minimum wage poster, and which one you post depends on your wage order rather than on your address. The Department of Labor publishes a separate poster per industry, each carrying the current rates and allowances, and each replaced when the rates change.

A poster is current only for the rates printed on it. An LS 207 carrying the 2024 or 2025 figures is a historical document rather than a compliant posting, and the Department of Labor republishes every poster each time the rates move. Check the printed rate against what you actually pay before you decide the wall is handled.

According to the Department of Labor posting requirements, every employer that sells or serves food or beverages posts two more notices alongside the poster: LS 605 on deductions from wages and LS 204 on tip appropriation. Farm employers post the wage order summary and a copy of the general work agreement in a visible location.

New York adds a step most states do not have. Under Labor Law section 201, digital versions of the required copies and abstracts (the posted summaries of the law) must also be made available through the employer’s website or by email. Every other document required to be physically posted under state or federal law must be made electronically available the same way.

Employees also have to be told that the posted materials are accessible electronically. For a team with remote or field staff, that is the piece of the posting rule that actually gets enforced, because there is no break room wall doing the work for you.

Separately, the Wage Theft Prevention Act requires a written pay rate notice at hire, in English and in the employee’s primary language where the Department of Labor publishes a translation. That notice states the rate or rates of pay, the basis of pay, the regular payday, and the employer’s legal and doing business as names.

Labor Law section 195 then requires written notice of any change to that information at least seven calendar days before the change, unless the change is reflected on the wage statement. A January rate increase shown on the pay stub satisfies that; a mid year change made quietly does not.

New York and the Federal Floor

The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 per hour since 2009. Even New York’s upstate rate is more than double it, so the federal figure never governs a New York paycheck. Where a state rate is higher than the federal one, the employee gets the higher rate; the US Department of Labor applies that principle across its consolidated state minimum wage tables.

Federal law still runs everything the state law does not displace: overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act, recordkeeping, and the classification tests that decide who is entitled to a minimum wage at all.

There is one New York specific link between the two systems. The state salary thresholds for the executive and administrative overtime exemptions are set by wage order rather than by statute, and they are revised on the same January calendar as the minimum wage.

The practical consequence is a split test. For 2026 the state thresholds are $1,275.00 per week in New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester, and $1,199.10 per week elsewhere, well above the federal $684. A salaried manager can be exempt from overtime under federal law and still owed it under New York law, which is a payroll problem, not a paperwork one.

What to Do When a Rate Rises

A minimum wage increase in New York is a payroll project with five moving parts, not a single field update. The rates move on January 1, and from the 2027 adjustment onward the size of the move is published in the autumn rather than known years in advance. Work the same sequence every time.

The step small teams skip is the second one. If your labor budget starts from a fully loaded hourly figure rather than the base rate, the increase becomes much easier to model, and our breakdown of how to calculate labor cost shows that arithmetic.

Getting the rate right is the easy half. Keeping the paperwork that proves it is where a team without an HR person loses the afternoon: offer letters, pay rate notices, acknowledgments, and posted notices in two formats.

FirstHR keeps that documentation attached to the employee record, so an updated rate flows into the onboarding materials instead of sitting in a folder nobody opens until an audit.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the minimum wage in New York right now?

It is $17.00 per hour in New York City and in Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties, and $16.00 per hour in the remainder of the state, both effective January 1, 2026. There is no small business exception and no employer size tier. What decides your rate is the county where the work is physically performed.

Which New York counties pay the higher rate?

The five boroughs of New York City plus Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester. Every other county is on the $16.00 rate, including Rockland, Putnam, Orange, and Dutchess, which trips up employers in the lower Hudson Valley. The line is drawn by county, not by commuting distance or metro area.

Can I count tips toward the minimum wage in New York?

Only in hospitality. A food service worker downstate gets at least $11.35 in cash with a maximum $5.65 tip credit, and upstate $10.70 with a $5.30 credit. A service employee gets a cash wage of $14.15 downstate or $13.30 upstate, against a much smaller credit of $2.85 and $2.70. No tip credit is allowed in building service, in nail salons, or in any other miscellaneous industry.

Does any New York city or county set its own minimum wage?

No. The geography is written into the state law itself, which is why there are two statewide rates. The closest thing to a local rate is at the airports: covered airport workers at JFK and LaGuardia must be paid the higher of the Commissioner designated rate or the Port Authority minimum wage of $21.25 per hour for 2026.

Is there a separate fast food or home care minimum wage in New York?

Fast food rates matched the general hospitality rates as of January 1, 2025, so covered chains pay $17.00 downstate and $16.00 upstate. Home care aides do have a higher minimum: $19.65 downstate and $18.65 upstate, effective January 1, 2026. Nail salon workers get the full minimum with no tip credit.

Is there a lower training or youth wage in New York?

No. The Department of Labor states plainly that there is no lower wage rate established for trainees or youth. The narrow exemptions that exist are for staff counselors at children’s camps, students at non profit charitable or educational institutions, and students obtaining supervised vocational experience for school credit.

When does New York’s minimum wage go up again?

On January 1, 2027, and the amount had not been published as of September 2026. That is the first indexed increase: Labor Law section 652 ties it to the Northeast Region consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers, with publication due no later than October 1 for the following January 1.