Minimum Wage in Gainesville, FL: Rates, Overtime, and Exemptions

The minimum wage in Gainesville, FL is $14.00 per hour as of September 30, 2025. That’s the statewide rate set by Article X, Section 24 of the Florida Constitution, and it applies to every private employer in the city regardless of size or industry. It goes up to $15.00 on September 30, 2026. The federal minimum of $7.25 doesn’t come into play here because Florida’s rate is higher and always controls.¹

Florida law preempts cities from setting their own minimum wage for private employers, so there is no separate Gainesville rate.² If you work in Florida, your employer owes you at least the state rate for every hour on the clock.

The Scheduled Increases

Amendment 2, passed by Florida voters in November 2020, wrote a year-by-year schedule into the constitution. Each September 30, the rate has climbed by exactly $1.00:³

September 30, 2021: $10.00
September 30, 2022: $11.00
September 30, 2023: $12.00
September 30, 2024: $13.00
September 30, 2025: $14.00
September 30, 2026: $15.00

September 30, 2026 is the last of the scheduled hikes. Beginning September 30, 2027, the state will calculate the rate based on changes in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) over the prior twelve months, with each new figure taking effect the following January 1.³ From that point on, the minimum wage will track inflation but never drop below $15.00.

Tipped Workers

If you regularly earn tips, your employer can pay a lower direct hourly wage by taking a tip credit. Florida’s tip credit is fixed at $3.02 per hour.¹ So the current direct wage for tipped employees is $10.98 per hour ($14.00 minus $3.02).⁴ When the general rate jumps to $15.00 on September 30, 2026, the tipped direct wage becomes $11.98. The $3.02 credit itself does not change.

Here is the rule employers sometimes ignore: if your tips plus your direct wage don’t add up to at least the full minimum for the hours you worked, your employer has to cover the difference. Your employer also has to tell you about the tip credit before applying it, and every tip you earn stays yours. Managers and supervisors cannot take a share.⁵ Employers must keep accurate records of hours, wages, and tips.⁶ When those records are sloppy or missing, the burden in a dispute tends to shift to the employer.

Who Is Not Covered

Florida’s constitution adopts the federal Fair Labor Standards Act definitions of employer and employee, so the federal exemptions apply here.¹ The exemptions most people run into:

Salaried executive, administrative, and professional employees are exempt from minimum wage and overtime if they earn at least $684 per week ($35,568 per year). Highly compensated employees earning at least $107,432 per year face a less demanding duties test.⁷ Job title alone doesn’t make you exempt. If you’re classified as salaried exempt but paid less than $684 per week, you likely still have minimum wage and overtime protection.

Full-time students working in retail, service, agriculture, or at their own college or university can be paid 85 percent of the minimum wage ($11.90 per hour right now) under a Department of Labor certificate, with hours capped at 20 per week while school is in session.⁸ This comes up often in Gainesville because of the University of Florida.

Tipped workers, as covered above, receive a lower direct wage, though total compensation still has to hit the full minimum.

Overtime

Florida has no separate overtime law, so federal rules control. Non-exempt employees must be paid at least one and a half times their regular rate for every hour past 40 in a workweek.⁹ At $14.00, overtime is $21.00 per hour. At $15.00 in September 2026, it becomes $22.50.

A workweek is a fixed 168-hour period. Your employer cannot average hours across two weeks to dodge overtime, and simply working a Saturday or a holiday does not trigger it. What matters is whether you passed 40 hours in that workweek.⁹ Training counts as work time unless it’s outside your normal schedule, truly voluntary, unrelated to your job, and you do no other work during it. All four have to be true.¹⁰ Travel between job sites during the workday counts. Your normal commute does not.

City Contractor Living Wage

One narrow exception applies only if you work for a company performing services under contract with the City of Gainesville. The city’s living wage ordinance sets pay for those employees at the hourly base of the city’s lowest pay grade as of the preceding October 1, with a 15 percent bump if the contractor doesn’t offer health benefits.¹¹ It does not apply to private employers generally. If you work for a restaurant, retail store, or any other private business in town, the statewide rate is your floor.

If Your Employer Pays You Less

Florida’s constitution gives you real remedies, but there’s a required first step. Before filing suit, you have to send your employer written notice identifying the minimum wage you believe you’re owed, the dates and hours at issue, and the total amount unpaid. The employer then has 15 calendar days to pay or resolve the claim.¹² Skipping this notice can sink your case.

If the employer doesn’t fix it within 15 days, you can sue. A successful claim gets you:

Full back wages for every hour you were underpaid
Liquidated damages equal to the back wages, effectively doubling the recovery
Attorney’s fees and court costs
Equitable relief such as reinstatement or an injunction where applicable

An employer who shorted you $3,000 could owe $6,000 plus your legal bills. Courts can reduce the liquidated damages if the employer proves the violation was a good-faith mistake, but that standard is hard to meet. Punitive damages are not available under the Florida minimum wage statute.¹²

You can also file a confidential complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division at 1-866-487-9243.¹³ The DOL will not disclose your name, the nature of the complaint, or even confirm one exists. Retaliation against a worker for filing a wage complaint or cooperating with an investigation is illegal under both federal and Florida law.¹

1
FindLaw. Florida Constitution Article X – Minimum Wage
2
Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes 218.077 – Wage and Employment Benefits Preemption
3
Florida Department of State Division of Elections. Florida Initiative Petition 18-01 Full Text
4
U.S. Department of Labor. Minimum Wages for Tipped Employees
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 203 – Definitions
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 21 – Recordkeeping Requirements Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
7
U.S. Department of Labor. US Department of Labor Announces Technical Amendment Restoring Regulations on Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional Employees
8
U.S. Department of Labor. Questions and Answers About the Minimum Wage
9
U.S. Department of Labor. Overtime Pay
10
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 22 – Hours Worked Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
11
Municode Library. Gainesville Code of Ordinances – Article IX Living Wage Requirements
12
Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes 448.110 – State Minimum Wage
13
U.S. Department of Labor. How to File a Complaint