South Carolina Minimum Wage: Rates and Employer Rules

A restaurant owner in Greenville once asked me which South Carolina wage table he should be paying from. I told him there isn't one, and he spent the next minute convinced I had misunderstood the question.

He hadn't misunderstood anything. South Carolina has never enacted a minimum wage law. Title 41 of the state code, where labor and employment law lives, has chapters on right to work, child labor, payment of wages and occupational safety. It has no minimum wage chapter to look up.

That makes the headline number easy and the edges interesting. South Carolina does impose one wage rule of its own, and it catches employers who assume the state is a blank slate. This page covers what you pay per hour and what changes that number. For hiring paperwork, final paychecks and everything else, see the South Carolina HR compliance guide.

The Current South Carolina Minimum Wage

The minimum wage in South Carolina is $7.25 per hour, and it took effect on July 24, 2009. That is the federal rate under the Fair Labor Standards Act, not a state rate, because South Carolina has no minimum wage statute of its own.

You can confirm the absence directly. The chapter list for Title 41 of the South Carolina Code runs from general provisions through unemployment benefits without a minimum wage chapter anywhere in it, and Chapter 3, which sets out what the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation may regulate, gives the agency no authority to set a wage rate.

The US Department of Labor lists South Carolina among the five states with no minimum wage law at all, alongside Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, in its state minimum wage laws table. Every employee covered by the FLSA in South Carolina is entitled to $7.25 per hour.

Is an Increase Scheduled?

No increase is scheduled in South Carolina. There is no state minimum wage law to raise, and there is no automatic inflation adjustment anywhere in the picture, because the state never built one and federal law does not contain one.

The last change to the number a South Carolina employer pays was the third step of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which moved the federal rate to $7.25 on July 24, 2009. Nothing has moved it since. If you employ people across state lines, our tracker of scheduled minimum wage increases covers the states that do raise their rates on a schedule.

Tipped Employees and the Tip Credit

A tip credit is allowed in South Carolina, on federal terms only. You may pay a direct cash wage as low as $2.13 per hour and count tips toward the remaining $5.12, provided the employee actually reaches $7.25 for every hour worked in the workweek.

South Carolina has no tip credit statute, no state notice form and no state cap that differs from the federal one. The Payment of Wages Act, the state law that governs how wages are paid, does not mention tips or gratuities anywhere, so the federal rules apply as written. A tipped employee is one who customarily and regularly receives more than $30 a month in tips.

Three conditions travel with the credit. You have to tell the employee you are taking it before you take it. You have to let the employee keep all tips except through a valid tip pool. And you have to make up the shortfall in any workweek where tips came in light. The mechanics are worked through in our guide to minimum wage for tipped employees.

City and County Rates in South Carolina

There are no city or county minimum wage rates in South Carolina, and there legally cannot be. Section 6-1-130 of the South Carolina Code, enacted in 2002, says a political subdivision of the State may not establish, mandate or otherwise require a minimum wage rate that exceeds the federal rate.

The statute defines political subdivision broadly, covering municipalities, counties, school districts, special purpose districts and public service districts. You can read the full text of section 6-1-130 on the General Assembly site. For a multi-site employer the practical result is one wage floor everywhere in the state.

That last row is the only crack in the rule and it matters if you bid on municipal work. A South Carolina city cannot impose a general minimum wage on private employers, but it can write a wage rate into its own procurement contracts, and that rate binds you as a contractor because you agreed to it, not because it is a local ordinance.

Industry Carve-Outs and the Subminimum Wage Ban

South Carolina has no industry-specific minimum wage. There is no fast food council rate, no healthcare minimum, no agricultural state rate and no hospitality schedule. What the state does have is a prohibition running the other direction, and it is the one wage rule South Carolina imposes that federal law does not.

Section 41-6-10 of the South Carolina Code bars employers, community rehabilitation programs and hospital patient care workers at regional centers from using section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act to pay disabled employees a subminimum wage. The statute then states that no individual with a disability may be paid less than the federal minimum wage. It took effect on May 23, 2022, and you can read it in Chapter 6 of Title 41.

Exempt status under the white collar rules is a separate question from the minimum wage and gets decided employee by employee. If you are unsure whether a salaried role is genuinely exempt, work through exempt versus non-exempt classification before you set the salary rather than after.

Youth and Training Wages

South Carolina has no state youth or training wage. The federal youth minimum wage of $4.25 per hour is the only one available, and it applies to employees under 20 years old during their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment with you, under FLSA section 6(g).

Three limits are easy to miss. The 90 days are calendar days, not days worked, so the clock runs through slow weeks. The rate ends on the employee's twentieth birthday even if fewer than 90 days have passed. And you may not displace an existing employee, including by cutting hours, in order to hire someone at the youth rate.

South Carolina's child labor law, in Chapter 13 of Title 41, governs hours, permitted occupations and enforcement for minors rather than their pay rate, and it directs that state regulations may not be stricter than the federal standard. Our overview of child labor laws covers the hours rules that sit alongside the wage.

One caution specific to this state. Section 41-6-10 says no individual with a disability may be paid less than the federal minimum wage, and that sentence is written broadly enough to reach past section 14(c). If you are considering the $4.25 youth rate or a student-learner certificate for an employee with a disability, get legal advice on the interaction before you set the rate rather than after.

The Poster Requirement

South Carolina employers post the federal Fair Labor Standards Act minimum wage notice, WH-1088, and there is no state minimum wage poster to add. Every employer of employees covered by the FLSA minimum wage provisions must display it in a conspicuous place where employees can readily read it, and the Wage and Hour Division publishes the current version free of charge on its poster page.

The state adds its own postings through the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, covering occupational safety and child labor. None of them carries a wage rate, so none of them changes when a wage does. The full posting list sits in the South Carolina compliance guide.

There is one more posting worth knowing about, and it is easy to satisfy by accident and easy to fail on purpose. Section 41-10-30(A) of the Payment of Wages Act lets an employer meet the wage terms notice requirement by posting the terms conspicuously at or near the place of work instead of handing every employee a written copy. If you use that option, the posted terms have to stay current.

Which Employers the $7.25 Floor Reaches

Because South Carolina has no general state wage law, FLSA coverage is almost the whole question. An employee who falls outside the FLSA has no general wage floor in South Carolina at all, which is the one place where the absence of a state statute has real bite.

Coverage comes two ways. Enterprise coverage reaches businesses with at least $500,000 in annual gross volume of sales or business done, plus hospitals, schools and government regardless of revenue. Individual coverage reaches employees whose own work involves interstate commerce, which in practice sweeps in most staff who handle out-of-state orders, card transactions or shipments.

Between the two tests, most South Carolina employees are covered even at small companies. Assuming you are outside the FLSA because you are under $500,000 in revenue is a common and expensive mistake. The mechanics of coverage, overtime and recordkeeping sit in our FLSA overview, and the national rate picture is in the federal minimum wage guide.

Note the exception. The subminimum wage ban in section 41-6-10 is state law, and it sets its own floor by reference to the federal minimum rather than by incorporating FLSA coverage. It reads as an independent state obligation, so do not assume it drops away for an employer the FLSA does not reach.

What to Do When a Rate Rises

When the federal rate moves, a South Carolina employer has a short and specific list of work to do, and the state Payment of Wages Act shapes two items on it. The rest is payroll hygiene that nothing in state law forces on a deadline.

The notice rule is the piece worth getting right, because it runs the opposite way from what most people expect. Section 41-10-30(A) requires seven calendar days of advance written notice before a change to the wage terms you gave at hiring, and then says the section does not apply to wage increases. A raise to the new floor can therefore take effect immediately. The seven-day clock is for cuts and for changes to hours, pay dates or deductions. The full Payment of Wages Act sets out both halves.

The cost of getting this wrong in South Carolina is not a small fine. Under section 41-10-80(C), an employee who is not paid wages due can recover three times the unpaid amount plus costs and reasonable attorney fees, with a three-year window to file. A rate change that never reached the payroll file is exactly the kind of gap that produces that claim.

FirstHR keeps pay rates, offer letters and acknowledgements in one employee record, so a rate change updates in one place instead of five spreadsheets. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a payroll provider, so the actual wage calculation still happens in your payroll system.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the minimum wage in South Carolina?

$7.25 per hour, the federal rate, in effect since July 24, 2009. South Carolina has never enacted a state minimum wage, and Title 41 of the state code contains no minimum wage chapter. The Department of Labor lists it among five states with no wage statute of their own.

Is the South Carolina minimum wage going up?

No increase is scheduled. There is no state law to raise, and no federal increase has passed since the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 finished phasing in. Federal law contains no automatic inflation adjustment, so the number holds until Congress changes it.

What do I have to pay tipped employees in South Carolina?

At least $2.13 per hour in cash wages, with tips covering the rest of $7.25. The maximum tip credit is $5.12. South Carolina has no tip credit statute, so federal rules govern: advance notice to the employee, employee retention of tips, and an employer top-up in any workweek where the total falls short.

Can a city or county in South Carolina set a higher minimum wage?

No. SC Code section 6-1-130 bars municipalities, counties, school districts and special purpose districts from requiring a minimum wage above the federal rate. Subsection C is the only exception, and it covers wage rates a local government writes into contracts it is a party to rather than general ordinances.

Can I pay a subminimum wage to an employee with a disability?

No. SC Code section 41-6-10, effective May 23, 2022, prohibits using FLSA section 14(c) to pay disabled employees a subminimum wage and states that no individual with a disability may be paid less than the federal minimum. A federal 14(c) certificate does not override the state prohibition.

Do I have to give notice before changing an employee's pay rate?

For most changes, yes: section 41-10-30(A) requires written notice at least seven calendar days before a change to the wage terms given at hiring. Increases are expressly carved out, so a raise can start immediately. The section does not apply to employers with fewer than five employees throughout the preceding twelve months.

Which minimum wage poster do South Carolina employers display?

The federal FLSA poster WH-1088, posted where employees can read it. There is no South Carolina minimum wage poster. Separate state postings for occupational safety and child labor are still required, but none of them states a wage rate.

Overtime is the companion question to the minimum wage and follows federal rules in South Carolina too, since the state has no overtime statute either. If you need the calculation, start with our overtime pay guide, then come back to the South Carolina compliance hub for the rest of the state picture.