Minimum wage after taxes in 2026

Before. Every minimum wage — federal, state or local — is a floor on gross pay, the amount your employer must pay for each hour worked before anything is withheld. Payroll taxes come out afterwards, so take-home pay is always below the headline rate. At the federal $7.25 and 40 hours a week, $290 gross becomes about $268 net in a state with no income tax. There is no version of the minimum wage that is measured after tax.

It depends on the state, because both the wage floor and the state income tax differ. At the federal $7.25 full time, a single filer nets roughly $268 a week, $1,161 a month and $13,926 a year. In District of Columbia, where the minimum is $18.40, the same 40 hours nets about $612 a week and $31,801 a year. The table below runs the figures for all 50 states and DC.

At the federal $7.25 and 40 hours a week, gross pay is $1,257 a month and net is about $1,161 in a state with no income tax. Full-time monthly gross is the hourly rate times 2,080 hours divided by 12, not four weekly checks — a year has 52 weeks, so most months contain a little more than four. Paid every two weeks, two months of the year contain three checks rather than two.

Social Security at 6.2% and Medicare at 1.45% are withheld from the first dollar with no threshold, so they take 7.65% of a minimum-wage check regardless of how small it is. Federal income tax only starts once annual pay clears the standard deduction, which is why a full-time minimum-wage year loses far less to income tax than to FICA. State income tax varies: nine states withhold nothing on wages, and the rest apply their own rates and deductions on top.

Full time at the federal $7.25 is $15,080 gross a year and about $13,926 after tax, an effective rate of 7.7%. In the median state, where the minimum is $11.85, the same hours produce $24,648 gross and about $21,908 net. Fewer hours means less tax as well as less pay, so part-time minimum-wage work keeps a higher share of gross.

The District of Columbia at $18.40 an hour, then Washington at $17.13, then New York City, Long Island and Westchester County at $17.00. 31 of the 50 states and DC pay above the federal $7.25; the other 20 sit exactly on it. Georgia and Wyoming still have $5.15 written in their own statutes, but nearly every employer there is covered by federal law, so $7.25 is what actually applies.

Yes, but not always all of it in cash from the employer. Most states let an employer pay a lower direct cash wage and count tips towards the difference — the tip credit. If tips plus the cash wage do not reach the full minimum for the hours worked, the employer must make up the shortfall. A small group of states bans the tip credit outright, so tipped staff there receive the full minimum in cash and keep tips on top. Each state page below has the current cash wage.

Rarely in any meaningful way. Full-time minimum-wage income sits at or below the standard deduction in several states and inside the 10% or 12% federal bracket everywhere else. The tax that actually bites is FICA, which is flat and has no floor. That is why raising hours changes take-home pay almost proportionally at this income level, unlike higher up the scale where a raise crosses bracket boundaries.