About StateWages
StateWages is an independent reference on US wage law, payroll and pay literacy: what the floor is, what counts as hours worked, what the lines on a stub mean, and how to argue for a number with a market band behind it.
How it is organised
Thirty pages across four sections, each one narrow on purpose.
- Minimum wage by state. The federal floor, the twenty states on it, tipped wages, the youth rate, and where city ordinances override both.
- Overtime. Coverage and exemptions, the salary threshold, the regular-rate calculation, rounding, travel and on-call.
- Paycheck literacy. Reading a stub, FICA against withholding, pre-tax deductions, and correcting an error.
- Salary and negotiation. Converting a salary to an hourly rate, decoding vague postings, and building a raise case.
The two rules
- Every figure is the higher of the federal and state requirement, and every page carries the date it was last checked. Where a rate varies by city, the page says so rather than quoting the state figure as if it were the ceiling.
- Every page states a position. Minimum wage content is the most copied writing on the web, so a page here has to end somewhere a reasonable person could disagree.
Sources
Figures come from the Fair Labor Standards Act and its regulations, Department of Labor guidance and field bulletins, state labour departments for state rates, and state or city ordinances for local rates. Rates that are indexed move every year, so the verification date on a page is the one to check first.
What it is not
StateWages is a reference, not legal advice, and not a substitute for advice on your own facts. There is no tracking beyond aggregate analytics, and no accounts. If something is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed rather than argued about.