Texas minimum wage 2026: $7.25 and the paycheck behind it

$7.25 an hour. The Texas Minimum Wage Act adopts the federal rate rather than setting a separate state figure, so the Texas minimum has not moved since the federal floor rose to $7.25 in July 2009. That makes Texas one of the states sitting exactly at the federal minimum, alongside most of the South and parts of the Midwest. Any future increase would have to come from Congress or from a change to Texas law.

At $7.25 and 40 hours a week, gross pay is $290 a week or $15,080 a year. A single filer with no other deductions takes home about $268 a week, $536 every two weeks, or $13,926 a year. Social Security takes $935 and Medicare $219. Federal income tax is small at this level because the standard deduction covers most of the income, and Texas takes nothing at all, so the overall rate is 7.7%.

$2.13 an hour in direct cash wages, the federal tipped minimum. Texas Labor Code section 62.052 follows section 3(m) of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which lets an employer take a tip credit of up to $5.12 against the $7.25 minimum. A tipped employee means someone who customarily and regularly receives more than $20 a month in tips. If tips plus the cash wage do not reach $7.25 for the hours worked, the employer must make up the difference. For 2026, up to $25,000 of qualified tips is deductible on your federal return.

No, not for private employers. Texas Labor Code section 62.0515 says the state minimum wage supersedes a wage established in a city ordinance, order or charter provision governing wages in private employment. It has said so since 2003. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and every other Texas city therefore run on the same $7.25 rate. The exception written into the statute is contracts, so where a city or county requires a higher wage as a term of doing business with it, that binds the contractor. Local living-wage rules of that kind cover a government's own employees and its contractors rather than private employers generally.

Because Texas ties itself to the federal rate rather than indexing its own. States that raise their minimum regularly either legislate increases or index the figure to inflation, and Texas does neither. The federal minimum has been $7.25 since July 24, 2009, the longest period without an increase since the federal minimum wage was created in 1938. Bills to raise the Texas minimum are filed most sessions and have not passed.

Few do. Market wages in most of Texas sit well above $7.25, so the statutory floor binds mainly in tipped work and some rural service jobs. That is why the practical Texas wage questions are usually about what $12, $15 or $20 an hour takes home rather than about the minimum. The hourly calculator covers every rate from the minimum upward.