Somebody ringing up groceries in Bridgeport, Connecticut is about to make $17.48 an hour. Somebody doing the exact same job in Houston, Texas is stuck at $7.25, the same rate that’s been on the books since 2009. That’s not a typo, and it’s not close. It’s the real state of minimum wage in this country heading into 2027, and the difference between the two ends of that scale keeps growing every year Congress leaves the federal number alone.
California and Connecticut have already locked in their 2027 numbers for January 1. Most other states haven’t announced theirs yet. They’ll do it this fall, using formulas tied to inflation data that isn’t fully in yet. You don’t need to wait for every state to finish before you can see where this is headed, though. The country is splitting into two groups: places where minimum wage climbs on autopilot every year, and places where it hasn’t moved in almost two decades.
Table of contents
- California and Connecticut already know their 2027 numbers
- The federal minimum wage has not moved since 2009
- Missouri already had automatic increases, then lost them
- More states will lock in their 2027 rate this fall
- Washington DC pays more than double the federal rate
- Check your specific city, not just your state
- Bottom line
California and Connecticut already know their 2027 numbers
California’s minimum wage rises to $17.40 an hour on January 1, 2027, up from $16.90 this year. That works out to about $36,192 a year for someone working a standard 40-hour week all year, an increase tied to the same inflation formula the state has used since 2017. The raise also pushes the minimum salary for exempt employees up to $72,384 a year, so it reaches well past hourly workers.
Connecticut moved first, confirming that its minimum wage will jump to $17.48 an hour on January 1, 2027, a 54 cent increase from $16.94. That number comes from a formula written into a 2019 law, based on how much wages grew nationally between mid-2025 and mid-2026. At $17.48 an hour, a full-time worker earns about $36,358 a year, edging out California for the highest confirmed state minimum wage set to take effect in January.
Neither state waited for the usual fall announcement window. California and Connecticut both use formulas built on data that comes in earlier in the year, which is why their 2027 numbers were locked in by early August while most other states are still waiting on theirs.
The federal minimum wage has not moved since 2009
While states push their own rates higher, the federal minimum wage sits exactly where it’s been since July 2009, at $7.25 an hour. That’s the longest stretch without a change since the federal minimum wage was created in 1938. A person working 40 hours a week, every week, at that rate brings home about $15,080 a year before taxes.
Twenty states still default to that $7.25 floor: Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Five of those, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee, don’t have a state minimum wage law at all, so the federal rate applies there by default. Georgia and Wyoming actually set their own state minimum lower, at $5.15 an hour, but employers still have to pay $7.25 because federal law overrides it for almost every job covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
None of that changes on January 1, 2027. Unless Congress acts, workers in those 20 states start next year exactly where they are right now.
Missouri already had automatic increases, then lost them
Missouri’s minimum wage reached $15.00 an hour in January 2026, the final step of a 2024 ballot measure that voters approved directly. That same measure was supposed to keep going, adjusting the rate for inflation starting in January 2027. It won’t. Missouri lawmakers passed a bill this year that repealed the inflation formula before it ever took effect, while leaving the $15.00 rate itself in place.
So Missouri workers keep the raise voters already approved, just not the annual increases that were supposed to follow it. A full-time worker at Missouri’s $15.00 rate earns about $31,200 a year, a number that isn’t likely to move again until state lawmakers decide to change it, since the automatic mechanism no longer exists. It’s a rare case of a state legislature reversing a piece of a ballot measure after voters had already approved it, and it’s a reminder that these formulas only last as long as the people in charge want them to.
More states will lock in their 2027 rate this fall
Sixteen states now adjust their minimum wage automatically every January, now that Missouri’s version has been repealed. California and Connecticut are done for 2027. The other fourteen, including Washington, currently the highest state minimum wage in the country at $17.13 an hour, along with Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont and Virginia, haven’t announced their 2027 rate yet.
Washington’s new rate is expected to be announced by the end of September, and Arizona typically announces its own new rate that same month, based on inflation data from the prior August. New York is switching to this same kind of automatic system for the first time. After years of fixed, legislated increases, New York’s minimum wage will start adjusting based on regional inflation data starting January 1, 2027, though the exact new number for New York City, Long Island and Westchester County, and for the rest of the state, wasn’t official as of late August.
By the time most of these states finish announcing their numbers this fall, the list of states above $17 an hour is going to get longer, not shorter.
Washington DC pays more than double the federal rate
No state minimum wage comes close to what Washington DC already pays. The district’s minimum wage rose to $18.40 an hour on July 1, 2026, and it stays there until its next scheduled adjustment next summer. That means DC’s rate has nothing to do with the January 2027 wave of state increases. It was already more than double the federal minimum before any of those other states caught up.
At $18.40 an hour, a full-time worker in DC earns about $38,272 a year. At the federal minimum of $7.25, a full-time worker earns about $15,080 a year for the exact same 40 hours a week. That’s roughly a $23,000 difference in annual pay for full-time work, based entirely on which side of a jurisdictional line someone happens to work on.
DC is also in the middle of phasing in a higher tipped minimum wage. The direct cash wage for tipped workers there rose to $10.30 an hour in July 2026, on its way toward 75 percent of the full minimum wage by 2034. Combined with the annual inflation adjustment built into DC’s law, the district’s minimum wage has climbed steadily for years while the federal number hasn’t moved at all.
Check your specific city, not just your state
State minimum wage is only the floor. Dozens of cities and counties set their own, higher minimum wage on top of it, mostly in California, Washington and Colorado. Seattle, Tukwila and Bellingham already pay well above Washington’s state rate, and Denver and Boulder do the same in Colorado. Some of these local rates adjust every January 1 too, on their own schedule, separate from the state’s.
Tipped workers are a different calculation entirely. A handful of states, including Washington, California, Montana, Alaska and Minnesota, require employers to pay the full minimum wage before tips even factor in. Most other states allow a lower direct cash wage as long as tips bring total pay up to the regular minimum. Federal contractors follow yet another minimum wage, set separately from both the federal and state numbers.
If you’re comparing a job offer in one state against a job in another, the state number is a decent starting point. It’s not the whole picture.
Bottom line
Twenty-one states raised their minimum wage this past January, putting more than $5.7 billion in new pay into the pockets of over 9.2 million workers. Nobody has a matching number yet for January 2027, since more than a dozen of the states involved are still waiting on their own formulas to produce a figure. Check your state labor department’s website this fall if you want the real number before it shows up on a paycheck.
