Seattle’s minimum wage goes up 84 cents to $22.14 an hour on January 1, 2027. The city’s current 2026 rate is $21.30, and the new figure applies to anyone working for an employer inside Seattle city limits.
Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards made the announcement on September 28, 2026. Its notice says that starting January 1, 2027, businesses will pay employees $22.14 per hour.
Who gets the raise
The wage covers employees who work within Seattle city limits, and the office says it applies regardless of immigration status. Since January 1, 2025, the city’s ordinance page says all employers, regardless of schedule size, pay the same minimum wage.
That leveled the field for small businesses. FOX 13 Seattle reports that under the 2025 change, small employers can no longer count tips or medical benefits toward the wage. They had been able to offset up to $2.72 an hour that way.
Anyone who works in Seattle should check one thing first: whether the job site sits inside the city limits. A worker in a neighboring city follows that city’s rule or the state’s, and the Seattle rate does not follow an employer’s mailing address.
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How the number is set and what it adds up to
The raise is not a vote or a surprise. The city ordinance raises the wage every January 1, and the amount follows inflation. The Office of Labor Standards says the 2027 increase reflects the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, known as CPI-W, for the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area.
The office announces the next year’s rate in the fall, which is why the $22.14 figure is public more than two months early. The announcement does not give a percentage, and the raise lands on the same date every year. Measured against the $21.30 rate, 84 cents works out to roughly 4 percent.
The dollar figure looks small on a pay stub and larger over a year. A full-time worker at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks logs 2,080 hours, and 84 cents on each comes to $1,747 before taxes. Someone working 20 hours a week logs 1,040 hours, so the same raise adds about $874, and a 30-hour week of 1,560 hours adds about $1,310. For a household counting on an hourly job, those are the amounts to set against the rent, the electric bill and the pharmacy. Spread across a year, a 2,080-hour schedule at $22.14 comes to about $3,838 a month before taxes, compared with about $3,692 at $21.30, a difference of roughly $146 a month.
That is simple arithmetic, not a payroll calculation. Overtime, unpaid time off and a job that starts mid-year all change the total. Anyone whose hours are irregular can multiply 84 cents by the hours on a recent pay stub to see the direction of the change.
How Washington and the nation compare
The state sets a lower floor. OPB reports that Washington’s statewide minimum wage will climb to $17.73 an hour on January 1, a 3.5 percent increase from $17.13, the highest of any state. The report also names SeaTac, Tukwila, Renton, Bellingham, Everett, Burien and unincorporated King County as places with rates above the state minimum. At $22.14, Seattle will sit $4.41 above the state’s $17.73 floor.
FOX 13 lists the federal minimum wage at $7.25, so Seattle’s new rate is roughly three times the federal floor. The same report says Burien, Renton and Tukwila currently pay more than Seattle, which is a reminder that the city line on a map can change the pay for the same job.
Seattle is one of many places adjusting pay on that date. Newsweek cites a count of 102 minimum wage changes across 20 states and 74 local jurisdictions in 2027, with 73 taking effect on January 1 and 29 more on July 1.
If the January paycheck falls short
Employers have a to-do list too. The Office of Labor Standards says it will mail a revised 2027 workplace poster to every business with a Seattle business license. Workers with a question about pay can call the office at 206-256-5297 or email [email protected], according to its announcement. Employers can reach the business line at 206-256-5297 or [email protected]. The poster is due in English first, with translations into more than 30 other languages to follow.
The ordinance page lists the office’s street address as 810 3rd Avenue, Suite 375, in Seattle, with the reception area open to the public on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. People who use a TTY can dial 7-1-1.
The first paycheck that covers January work is the one to check against $22.14. The bigger question for many households is what a higher hourly wage does to monthly income, and to any income-based help the household relies on or has never looked into.
Pay going to $22.14 on January 1? Check the income-based help first.
A raise changes monthly income, and many programs for older and lower-income households look at income before they look at anything else. Seattle workers have until January 1 to see where the household stands before the new number shows up on a pay stub.
The Benefits Checklist turns that into a 10-minute scan of 11 benefit programs, including Medicare Savings Programs, Extra Help for prescriptions, SNAP food benefits at 60 and over, and heating help. It comes with the 2026 income limits for each program and a 50-state phone directory, plus a printable tracker with the download.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
