Tomorrow morning, hourly workers in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C. get a raise, whether or not their employers get around to announcing it. A shift that starts tonight and runs past midnight even splits the difference: hours worked after 12:01 a.m. on July 1 are paid at the new rate.

July 1 is the second-biggest date on the minimum wage calendar after January 1, because a handful of states and a longer list of cities tie their annual inflation adjustments to the fiscal-year calendar. Here is who gets a raise this week, what the new numbers are, and what to do if your paycheck does not reflect them.

The three statewide increases

Alaska goes from $13.00 to $14.00 an hour, the second of three one-dollar steps voters approved in 2024’s Ballot Measure 1. The state labor department’s announcement of the July 1 increase notes the schedule tops out at $15.00 on July 1, 2027, after which the rate returns to annual inflation adjustments. Alaska is also unusual in a worker-friendly way: tip credits are not allowed, so tipped workers get the full minimum before tips.

Oregon raises all three of its regional rates by 50 cents. According to the Bureau of Labor and Industries rate schedule, the standard rate becomes $15.55, the Portland metro rate $16.80, and the non-urban county rate $14.55. Which one applies depends on where you work, not where you live, and Oregon, like Alaska, does not permit tip credits.

Washington, D.C. moves from $17.95 to $18.40 an hour, among the highest minimums in the country, per the Department of Employment Services notice. The District’s base wage for tipped workers rises to $10.30, and if tips do not bring a worker up to the full $18.40 average, the employer must pay the difference.

The big-city increases

Chicago raises its minimum to $17.05 an hour for employers with four or more employees, up from $16.60, with the tipped minimum rising to $12.96, according to the city’s announcement. Chicago caps its annual inflation adjustment at 2.5 percent, which is why the increase is 45 cents rather than something larger.

Los Angeles moves its citywide minimum to $18.42, a 55-cent increase set each year from local inflation data and published by the city’s Office of Wage Standards. A cluster of other California cities, including San Francisco, Berkeley, and Emeryville, adjust their own ordinances on the same date, as do localities in Illinois, Maryland, and elsewhere in California. If you work inside a city with its own wage ordinance, the highest applicable rate, federal, state, or local, is the one you are owed.

Why these raises happen automatically

None of this required a new vote this year. Most of these jurisdictions index their minimum wage to the Consumer Price Index, so the rate adjusts annually by formula. Oregon recalculates every spring based on the change in CPI through March; D.C. and Los Angeles use their local metro-area inflation figures. Indexing means workers do not wait a decade for legislatures to act, and employers get a predictable annual date to update payroll.

The federal minimum wage, by contrast, stays exactly where it has been since 2009: $7.25 an hour, as listed on the Labor Department’s state minimum wage page. In states with no higher state minimum, that is still the floor, which is why the gap between the highest and lowest legal wage floors in the country is now more than $11 an hour.

What this means for your paycheck

If you earn the minimum in one of these places, your first paycheck covering July hours should show the new rate. A few practical notes. Employers cannot average the old and new rates for a pay period that straddles the date; July hours are July rates. If you earn slightly above the new minimum, you are not legally entitled to a matching raise, though compression at the bottom of pay scales often nudges those wages up over time. And if you are salaried but low-paid, minimum wage law still applies: your salary divided by hours worked must clear the applicable floor.

Tipped workers should look twice at their stubs this week. In jurisdictions that allow a tip credit, like D.C. and Chicago, both the base cash wage and the full minimum are moving, and the employer’s obligation to top up light tip weeks moves with them. In Alaska and Oregon, there is no tip credit at all: the full new hourly rate is owed before a single tip is counted, and tips belong to the worker on top of it.

If your employer does not pay it

Start with payroll or HR, since honest lag is common in the first week or two. If that goes nowhere, every one of these jurisdictions takes wage complaints directly: Oregon through BOLI, Alaska through its Wage and Hour office, D.C. through the Department of Employment Services, Chicago through its Office of Labor Standards, and Los Angeles through the Office of Wage Standards. For federal-floor violations anywhere, the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division handles complaints, and retaliation for filing one is itself illegal. Back wages in these cases are routinely recovered; the paper trail you need is just your pay stubs and your own record of hours.

This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.