Florida’s minimum wage jumps to $15 an hour on September 30, 2026, the last step in a schedule state voters locked in back in 2020. Here’s what that means for your payroll.
Where Florida’s minimum wage stands right now
The current rate, through September 29, 2026
Florida’s minimum wage sits at $14.00 an hour right now, and it has been held there since the last scheduled step on September 30, 2025. Every hourly employee covered by Florida’s minimum wage law is entitled to that rate or higher, and since Florida’s number beats the federal minimum wage, Florida’s is the one that governs here.
What changes on September 30, 2026
That changes on September 30, 2026. The rate moves to $15.00 an hour, the final increase written into the schedule Florida voters approved back in 2020. Tipped employees move too, with their minimum cash wage rising to $11.98 an hour plus tips, which keeps the same $3.02 tip credit employers have used through every step of this schedule. Any employee working in Florida on or after that date needs the new rate, whether they’re full time, part time, or seasonal help brought on for three months.
How Florida got to $15 an hour
The Amendment 2 schedule, year by year
Florida voters approved Amendment 2 in November 2020 with just over 60 percent support, the threshold a constitutional amendment needs to pass in this state, and it laid out a fixed, published path from $8.56 an hour to $15.00 over six years, with one dollar-an-hour step every September 30. That kind of predictability is genuinely useful for planning, since a business that budgets ahead knows exactly what’s coming and when instead of getting surprised by a legislative session or a ballot measure most companies never see coming.
| Effective Date | Standard Minimum Wage | Tipped Minimum Cash Wage |
|---|---|---|
| September 30, 2021 | $10.00 | $6.98 |
| September 30, 2022 | $11.00 | $7.98 |
| September 30, 2023 | $12.00 | $8.98 |
| September 30, 2024 | $13.00 | $9.98 |
| September 30, 2025 | $14.00 | $10.98 |
| September 30, 2026 | $15.00 | $11.98 |
What happens after 2026
The fixed dollar-a-year schedule ends once Florida hits $15.00. Starting in 2027, the state switches to an annual adjustment tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, the same inflation measure a number of other states lean on to keep their minimum wage current. The exact 2027 figure isn’t published yet, so the honest answer is to treat this page as your reference through the 2026 step and confirm the current number directly with the state before your first payroll run of the year: Florida’s official minimum wage page at floridajobs.org.
What this doesn’t change
Reaching $15.00 doesn’t touch everything on your payroll at once, and it’s worth being just as clear about what stays the same. The federal minimum wage stays at $7.25 an hour, so Florida’s higher state rate is the one that actually applies here, the way it has for years. Salaried employees classified as exempt under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act follow a completely separate salary threshold set by the U.S. Department of Labor, not this hourly schedule, so an exempt manager’s classification doesn’t change just because the hourly rate around them did. And a signed employment contract that sets pay above $15.00 stays exactly as written; this schedule sets a floor, not a target.
One number worth knowing if you run locations in more than one Florida city or county: state law generally preempts cities and counties from setting their own minimum wage above the statewide rate. That means an employer with a Sarasota location and a Tampa location works from the same $15.00 figure in both places instead of tracking a patchwork of local ordinances, which is one less variable to manage if your growth plan includes more than one Florida address.
What a dollar-an-hour raise does to your payroll
The direct cost, multiplied across your team
A dollar-an-hour raise sounds small until you multiply it across a real team and a real year. Take a company with 20 hourly employees near minimum wage, each working roughly 1,800 hours a year: that’s close to $36,000 in added base wages alone, before anything else moves. Run your own headcount and average hours through that same math and you’ll have an actual number instead of a guess, which matters more than most owners expect once budgeting season starts.
The costs that move with it
Base pay is rarely the only line that shifts. Payroll taxes, workers’ compensation premiums, and any benefit calculated as a percentage of wages all scale up with the new rate, and overtime pay for anyone working past 40 hours a week climbs too, since time and a half is now time and a half of a higher number. Companies that peg their next pay band above minimum wage, so a $16 lead role still reads as a real step up from an entry-level $15, often find the increase ripples further up the chart than the headline figure suggests. Employers with a lot of tipped staff, multiple Florida locations, or a seasonal workforce that scales up and down through the year tend to feel this the most, simply because the same math repeats across more people and more pay periods.
Get ahead of September 30
Confirm every hourly employee’s pay rate meets or beats $15.00 (or $11.98 plus tips for tipped roles) before the effective date, not on it, and update your payroll software’s default rate so nobody runs a pay cycle at the old number by accident. If you have an open job posting or a pending offer letter quoting anything below the new minimum, fix it now, before it becomes the wage a new hire actually signs on for; it’s an easy thing to miss when a listing has been live for weeks. Florida also requires an updated minimum wage notice posted each year the rate changes, so check your break room wall and your handbook for any dollar figure that needs to move with it. That notice comes from the state in English and Spanish, so if part of your team reads better in Spanish, post the version that actually gets read, not just the one that’s easiest to grab. Small detail, real exposure if it slips through.
Worth doing at the same time: tell your team before the pay stub does it for you. A raise that shows up unannounced can read as generic and forgettable, while the same increase framed as a real update, communicated a pay period or two ahead, lands as something the company is on top of rather than something that just happened to it.
If your business runs the kind of payroll where this increase touches more than a few roles, a compliance review before the date beats one after it.
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