Ohio restaurant servers, bartenders and other tipped workers will get a base wage of $5.70 an hour starting Jan. 1, up from $5.50, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce. The rate for non-tipped workers rises on the same day, from $11.00 to $11.40 an hour. The tipped base is the cash wage an employer pays before tips, not what a tipped worker takes home in total, and it is the number every January pay stub has to show as a minimum.
What the $5.70 base pays
The state wage change is a 20-cent raise for the tipped base and a 40-cent raise for everyone else. The tipped raise adds $5 a week for someone who works 25 hours and $8 a week for a full 40-hour week, before tips. The state sets the tipped rate below the regular minimum because tips are expected to make up the difference.
The gap between the two Ohio rates is $5.70 an hour. That is the most the employer can count from tips toward the $11.40 minimum, according to the state’s 2027 numbers. If tips in a pay period do not cover the gap, the employer owes the difference.
What can an employer pay before tips?
Workers on tipped pay should compare the cash wage on their first January pay stub with the $5.70 base. A stub that shows less, for an employer covered by the state law, is the thing to raise with a manager or with the state. The Ohio Department of Commerce wage poster, revised Sept. 30, 2026, says employers using the tip credit must show that tipped workers still receive at least the minimum wage once wages and tips are combined.
Retirement deadlines, in your inbox: Miss an enrollment or claim deadline and the money can be gone. Join the Retirement Money Brief and we’ll send you our 2026 Government Check Reality Tracker as a welcome gift.
Get the Brief + the check tracker →
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Who counts as tipped, and who is exempt
The state poster says tipped pay applies to employees who customarily and regularly receive more than $30 a month in tips. Workers below that line are non-tipped and fall under the $11.40 rate.
Some employers are not covered by the new rates at all. The poster says employers with gross receipts under $419,000 must pay at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Employees under 16 are also held to the $7.25 rate. Cleveland 19 reports the small-business line as $420,000 and the age group as 14- and 15-year-olds, so the state’s own poster is the safer reference for the exact threshold.
The poster also covers overtime. Overtime at one and a half times the wage rate applies after 40 hours in a workweek, except for employers grossing less than $150,000 a year. Federal employees, outside salespeople paid on commission and certain executive, administrative and professional staff are among the groups the poster lists as exempt.
The announcement came on Sept. 30, when Cleveland 19 reported the new numbers and the Commerce Department revised its wage poster the same day. The new rates apply to pay earned from Jan. 1, 2027, so the last December stubs still show the old $5.50 base.
Workers who are paid partly in tips can keep a simple weekly log of hours worked, cash wages and tips reported. That record makes the shortfall test above a two-minute check and gives a worker numbers to point to if a stub looks wrong.
How Ohio compares with other states
Ohio’s $5.70 base is well below other states that pay tipped workers a higher cash wage. ColoradoBiz reports a 2027 tipped minimum of $12.69 an hour in Colorado, where the full minimum rises to $15.71.
Washington State sits at the far end. The Washington Department of Labor & Industries lists no tip credit, so tipped workers there earn the full state minimum before any tips. A tipped worker in Ohio relies on customers for half of the minimum wage, which is why a slow week matters more there.
Where the pay stub can fall short
Tips vary by shift, season and restaurant. Colorado’s gap between its $12.69 tipped rate and $15.71 full minimum is $3.02, against Ohio’s $5.70. A worker who has a slow week still has the right to the full $11.40 per hour once wages and tips are combined, as the state poster describes it. The cash base does not change with the tip jar, and neither does that guarantee.
A short example shows the test. A tipped worker who puts in 30 hours in a week earns $171 in cash wages at $5.70 an hour. The $11.40 minimum for those hours comes to $342, so tips must add up to at least $171 that week. If they come to less, the employer owes the shortfall.
Last year’s numbers worked the same way. The $11.00 minimum minus the $5.50 base left a $5.50 tip credit. In 2027 the credit grows to $5.70, because the tipped base rises 20 cents while the full minimum rises 40 cents.
Tips not bringing the pay up to the full minimum?
A raise of 20 cents an hour is easy to lose in a month when tips run short and bills do not. The wage story is about one leak, and tipped households tend to have several.
No product covers tipped wages, so the turn here is plain: from the pay-stub question to the household money that slips away elsewhere. The Keep-It Starter Bundle is nine guides in one download, one per money leak, across scams, taxes, Medicare costs, house costs and savings that earn nothing. It runs 95 pages, and one guide shows how to cut Medicare costs by appealing the income surcharge and using the drug cap.
Get the nine-guide Starter Bundle for a tipped-wage household →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
