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The minimum wage in the state of Illinois is $15.00 per hour for workers 18 and older, the rate that took effect January 1, 2025, completing a phased schedule of six annual increases. But Illinois doesn't operate on a single number.
Maryland's minimum wage is $15.00 per hour for every employer in the state, regardless of business size, a rate that took effect January 1, 2024 under the Fair Wage Act of 2023.
Texas does not set its own minimum wage dollar amount. The state's minimum wage law, administered by the Texas Workforce Commission, defers entirely to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which means workers in Texas earn a floor of $7.25 per hour, a rate unchanged since July 24, 2009.
Amendment 42, approved by Colorado voters in 2006, turned the state's minimum wage into a self-adjusting constitutional provision indexed to the Consumer Price Index for the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metro area.
The state of Missouri minimum wage is set through voter-approved ballot initiatives rather than ordinary legislation, a mechanism that carried the rate to $12.30 per hour in 2024 and will push it to $15.00 by January 2026.
Three separate legal floors governed what California employers owed their workers during 2025: a $16.50 statewide baseline, a $20.00 fast-food sector rate, and a healthcare scale climbing as high as $23.00 per hour at large hospital systems.
North Carolina's minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, locked to the federal floor under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and it hasn't moved by a single penny since July 24, 2009.
Pennsylvania's minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, the lowest rate any state can legally enforce because it mirrors the federal floor set by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Since July 24, 2009, Pennsylvania has not raised its minimum wage by a single cent. The rate sits at $7.25 per hour, locked to the federal floor, while inflation has eroded its real purchasing power to approximately $6.87 in 2009 dollars.
The Fair Wage Act of 2023 set the minimum wage in the state of Maryland at $15.00 per hour for all employers regardless of size, effective January 1, 2024, pulling an estimated 163,000 workers above the previous $13.25 floor. But $15.00 is the baseline, not the ceiling.
Michigan's minimum wage is $13.73 per hour as of January 1, 2026, governed by the Improved Workforce Opportunity Wage Act, a law that was gutted by the state legislature in 2018, restored by the Michigan Supreme Court in 2024, and then rewritten through bipartisan compromise in 2025.
Arizona's minimum wage is $14.35 per hour, effective January 1, 2024, governed by an automatic annual formula tied to the Consumer Price Index that no legislature and no governor can override without a three-quarters supermajority vote.
