Schedule for California Minimum Wage rate 2017-2023.

Currently, 29 states and D.C. have minimum wages above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Five states have not adopted a state minimum wage: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee.

The national minimum wage was created by Congress under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938. Others have argued that the primary purpose was to aid the lowest paid of the nation’s working population, those who lacked sufficient bargaining power to secure for themselves a minimum subsistence wage.

It is illegal for California employers to pay employees less than the minimum wage. If your employer violates minimum wage laws, you can recover the money you are owed in a wage and hour lawsuit. But many cities and counties in California have a higher minimum wage.

Under federal law, employers can take a tip credit by paying tipped workers, such as servers and bartenders, as low as $2.13 an hour if those workers earn at least the standard minimum wage of $7.25 an hour once their tips are added in. …

Waiters aren’t paid like everyone else. The understanding is that tips will make up for the difference between the tipped and regular pay floor. But even when the tips don’t make up that difference, waiters still make no less than the federal minimum wage because restaurants are legally required to pay the rest.

If an employee’s tips combined with the employer’s direct (or cash) wages of at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the minimum hourly wage of $7.25 per hour, the employer must make up the difference. whereby any part of the tip received becomes the property of the employer.