Ten states have now published their 2027 minimum wages, and the spread between the top and bottom of the group is $6.33 an hour. Washington leads at $17.73, while Ohio sits at the bottom at $11.40. Every figure comes from the state’s own labor agency, and Michigan’s $1.27 an hour is the largest single increase among the ten.
The ten state rates, from Washington’s $17.73 to Ohio’s $11.40
The ten states that have published a 2027 general minimum wage, ranked from highest to lowest, are listed here with the 2026 rate each is replacing.
- Washington: $17.73, up from $17.13, according to the Department of Labor & Industries.
- Connecticut: $17.48, up from $16.94, according to Governor Ned Lamont’s office.
- California: $17.40, according to the Department of Industrial Relations.
- Rhode Island: $17.00, up from $16.00, according to the state Department of Labor and Training.
- New Jersey: $16.48 for most employees, up from $15.92, according to the Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
- Colorado: $15.71, up from $15.16, according to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
- Maine: $15.70, up from $15.10, according to the Maine Department of Labor.
- Michigan: $15.00, up from $13.73, under Senate Bill 8, as listed by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity.
- Minnesota: $11.87, up 3.99 percent, according to the state Department of Labor and Industry.
- Ohio: $11.40 for non-tipped employees, up 3.5 percent from $11.00, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce.
Nine of the ten take effect on January 1, 2027, in the agencies’ own wording. Colorado’s announcement says only that the new wage arrives “in 2027,” which is why this story uses the year rather than the month as the common thread.
Michigan’s $1.27 step is the largest in the group
Michigan moves furthest, from $13.73 to $15.00, a difference of $1.27 an hour. The jump is not an inflation adjustment. The state’s labor department says Senate Bill 8 raises the minimum wage in steps to $15 by 2027, which makes January 1 the end of a phased schedule instead of a routine annual update.
Rhode Island is next, climbing a full dollar from $16.00 to $17.00. Everywhere else the dollar change is much smaller. Connecticut adds 54 cents, Colorado 55 cents, New Jersey 56 cents, and Washington and Maine 60 cents each. For a full-time worker at 40 hours a week, a 60-cent increase is $24 more in a gross weekly paycheck before taxes.
Inflation formulas differ from state to state
Most of these raises are automatic, and the states do not all measure inflation the same way. Connecticut ties its adjustment to the federal employment cost index for the twelve months ending June 30, 2026, which produced a 3.2 percent increase. Labor Commissioner Bartolomeo said in the governor’s release that minimum wage increases “ensure that Connecticut’s lowest wage workers aren’t left behind as the economy grows.”
New Jersey and Ohio index to consumer prices through their constitutions, and Maine’s labor department attributes its 60-cent rise to a 4.1 percent change in the CPI-W. Colorado also adjusts by the consumer price index under its state constitution. California’s number came from a different step: the Department of Finance certified the increase on July 31, 2026, and the governor then announced it. Washington’s labor department says it recalculates each year from federal cost-of-living data, beginning in mid-September.
Tipped, youth and local rates sit under the headline numbers
The general rate is not the only number that changes. Washington sets a 2027 rate of $15.07 an hour for workers aged 14 and 15. Rhode Island’s tipped cash wage is $3.89 an hour, with a maximum tip credit of $12.11. Colorado’s tipped minimum is $12.69, and Denver’s own local minimum for 2027 is $19.84 an hour, well above the state’s $15.71.
New Jersey publishes several tiers. Acting Labor Commissioner Kevin D. Jarvis said in the department’s announcement that “Fair wages are the foundation of a strong economy,” and that reaching the $15 benchmark for agricultural workers is “a particularly meaningful step.” That $15.00 rate for agriculture is up from $14.20. Seasonal and small employers with fewer than six employees pay $16.25, long-term care direct care staff $19.48, and tipped workers a $6.61 minimum cash wage, up from $6.05.
Ohio’s coverage line and the federal floor
Ohio’s $11.40 comes with a limit that does not apply in most of the states above. The Department of Commerce says the state wage covers businesses with annual gross receipts above $420,000, up from $405,000. Smaller employers, and workers aged 14 and 15, remain under the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. Ohio’s tipped minimum rises to $5.70 from $5.50, and the 3.5 percent increase follows Ohio’s constitutional formula using the CPI-W.
California attaches a second consequence to its wage. Because the state’s exempt-salary test is twice the minimum wage for a 40-hour week, a salaried employee must earn at least $72,384 a year to be exempt from overtime in 2027, according to the Department of Industrial Relations.
Why Nebraska is not counted among the ten
Nebraska’s Department of Labor posts a wage table, updated July 31, 2026, that lists $15.26 for January 1, 2027. The same table runs through 2030 with figures of $15.53, $15.80 and $16.08, and it describes no consumer-price formula, so it reads as a long-range schedule and not as the final annual determination the other ten states have published. This story counts only rates that a state labor agency has announced as the adopted figure for 2027.
The ten rates and effective dates above come from the agencies’ own announcements, read on October 3, 2026, and the figures are gross hourly amounts for covered employers.
Where a paycheck lands after a raise
A higher state minimum changes the hourly rate on the paystub, but the money still has to move through a bank account, where collection and account problems can interrupt it. The unfinished job for any worker with a bank account or a debt on file is knowing which protections and response steps apply before a problem arrives.
The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit includes the 2-month bank protection rule and the debt-validation steps, along with a protected-funds and dispute log for keeping records.
Get The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit for the paycheck that follows the raise →
This piece was drafted with AI assistance; the figures were checked against the state labor agencies’ own 2027 minimum wage announcements.
