The Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (PMWA): Coverage, Complaints, and Recovery

The Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act requires most employers in the state to pay at least $7.25 per hour and to pay time-and-a-half for every hour worked beyond 40 in a single workweek.¹ The $7.25 rate has been frozen since July 2009, and no increase is in effect for 2026.² If you believe you’ve been underpaid, you have three years from the date each paycheck was due to file a complaint with the state or bring your own lawsuit.

What the Act Requires

Every covered employer must pay at least $7.25 per hour for all hours worked. The statute includes a ratchet provision: if the federal minimum wage rises above Pennsylvania’s rate, the state rate automatically matches it.³

Overtime kicks in at 40 hours in a single workweek, and each workweek stands on its own. An employer cannot average hours across a two-week pay period. Working 30 hours one week and 50 the next still triggers overtime on the 10 extra hours in week two. Compensatory time off instead of overtime pay is not legal for private-sector workers in Pennsylvania, no matter how it’s framed in a handbook.¹

How the Regular Rate Is Calculated

The “regular rate” used for overtime isn’t always your base hourly wage. Non-discretionary bonuses, production incentives, and commissions earned during the workweek all fold into the calculation. A worker earning $15 per hour who also receives a $200 weekly production bonus has a regular rate higher than $15, and overtime must be computed on that adjusted figure. Miscalculating the regular rate is one of the most common sources of wage disputes, and the back-pay exposure compounds across many employees and many weeks.

Tipped Workers

Tipped employees operate under a different pay structure. Employers may pay a cash wage as low as $2.83 per hour and claim a tip credit of $4.42 to cover the gap to $7.25.⁴ The tip credit applies only if the employee earns more than $135 in tips during the month. If your tips plus the $2.83 cash wage don’t add up to at least $7.25 per hour in any given workweek, your employer must pay the difference out of pocket.⁵

This is where violations happen constantly. A slow Tuesday lunch shift doesn’t let the employer off the hook. The obligation to track tips and make up the shortfall belongs to the employer, not the worker. If you’re a tipped employee and your paychecks never seem to reflect any make-up pay during slow weeks, that’s worth a closer look.

Who Is Covered and Who Is Exempt

The act applies broadly. An employer under the PMWA is any individual, partnership, association, or corporation acting in the interest of an employer in relation to a worker, which pulls small businesses, nonprofits, and large corporations alike into the law’s reach.

Several categories of workers are carved out from both minimum wage and overtime protections:

Farm workers performing agricultural labor
Domestic workers in or around a private home
Newspaper carriers delivering directly to consumers
Employees of small newspapers (weekly, semiweekly, or daily with circulation under 4,000, mostly within the county of publication)
Executive, administrative, and professional employees who meet both a duties test and a salary threshold
Outside salespeople working primarily away from the employer’s place of business
Workers at charitable, religious, or educational nonprofits where no true employment relationship exists, and employees of seasonal recreational establishments operating fewer than seven months per year
Golf caddies

That list comes straight from the statute.⁶ Employers sometimes stretch these categories beyond what the law actually allows. Misclassifying a worker as exempt when their duties don’t genuinely fit can expose the employer to back-pay liability for every week the misclassification lasted.

A job title alone doesn’t make someone exempt. Pennsylvania’s regulations set minimum salary levels of $155 per week for executive and administrative employees and $170 per week for professional employees, with a simplified duties test at $250 per week.⁷ These are strikingly low compared to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act threshold, so for employers covered by both laws the federal standard usually controls. Most salaried workers earning modest pay are entitled to overtime under one law or the other, regardless of title.

What Your Employer Must Keep on Record

Pennsylvania regulations require employers to maintain detailed records for each employee, preserved for at least three years from the date of the last entry.⁷ Those records cover:

Full name, home address, and any identifying payroll number
Daily and weekly hours worked, regular hourly rate, total straight-time earnings, overtime premium pay, and all additions to or deductions from wages
Total wages paid each period, the date of payment, and the period covered
The time and day the workweek begins

Records kept at a central office rather than the workplace must be produced within seven calendar days of a request from the Department of Labor and Industry. For a worker building a claim, this matters a great deal. If your employer can’t produce records, that gap generally works against them, not you.

How to File a Wage Complaint

Before you file, gather what you can: your employer’s full legal name and address, the names of supervisors or owners, the dates you believe violations occurred, the hours you worked during those periods, and pay stubs or time records showing what you were actually paid. The more precise your documentation, the faster an investigator can move.

Pennsylvania has two separate complaint tracks. For minimum wage and overtime violations under the PMWA, you file through the Department of Labor and Industry’s minimum wage complaint process.⁸ For unpaid wages more broadly, including final paychecks, commissions owed, or withheld pay, you file under the Wage Payment and Collection Law through a different form.⁹ Picking the wrong form can delay your claim.

Complaints can be submitted online or by mail, fax, or email to the Bureau of Labor Law Compliance at 1301 Labor and Industry Building, 651 Boas Street, Harrisburg, PA 17121.⁹ If you file online, pull your documents together before you start; the system times out after 20 minutes of inactivity.

How Long You Have to File

You have three years from the date wages were due to file a claim under the PMWA. The same three-year deadline applies whether you go through the Department of Labor and Industry or sue in court. The clock runs on each individual paycheck, so a pattern of underpayment stretching back four years lets you recover for the most recent three but not the oldest violations. Every paycheck that ages past three years is gone for good.

What You Can Recover

An employer who pays less than the minimum wage owes the full difference between what was paid and what should have been paid, plus court costs and reasonable attorney’s fees. You can bring the action yourself, or the Secretary of Labor and Industry can take an assignment of the claim and pursue it for you.¹⁰ Any agreement you signed to accept less than minimum wage is not a valid defense for the employer.

Claims under the related Wage Payment and Collection Law can also recover liquidated damages when wages remain unpaid for 30 days past the regular payday and the employer has no good-faith basis for the dispute. Liquidated damages equal 25% of the total wages owed or $500, whichever is greater.¹¹ Combined with attorney’s fees, the total exposure for an employer can run well past the original unpaid wages.

Protection Against Retaliation

Federal law prohibits employers from firing, demoting, or otherwise punishing workers who file wage complaints, and those protections cover Pennsylvania employees. Filing about minimum wage violations or unpaid overtime is a protected activity. If an employer retaliates, the remedies available include reinstatement, back pay for lost wages, and reimbursement of legal fees. In cases involving especially egregious conduct, courts may also award compensatory or punitive damages.

Fear of retaliation is the single biggest reason workers don’t file legitimate claims. The legal framework is built to make retaliation more expensive for the employer than simply paying what was owed. If you’ve been let go or had your hours cut shortly after raising a wage issue, document the timeline carefully. The proximity between your complaint and the adverse action is often the strongest evidence.

Pending Changes for 2026

Pennsylvania’s $7.25 rate has gone unchanged for more than 17 years, placing it among the lowest state minimum wages in the country. The Pennsylvania House passed legislation in early 2026 to raise the rate, and Governor Shapiro’s 2026–27 budget proposal calls for a $15 per hour minimum wage.² The state Senate has not acted on either measure, and no increase is currently scheduled to take effect. If the federal minimum wage rises before Pennsylvania acts, the state rate will automatically match it under the ratchet provision.³ Until then, $7.25 is still the floor.

1
Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. Wage FAQs
2
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. PA House Passes Bill to Increase Minimum Wage Following Gov Shapiro’s Call
3
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 43 PS Labor 333.104 – Minimum Wages
4
U.S. Department of Labor. Minimum Wages for Tipped Employees
5
Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. Overtime and Tipped Worker Rules in PA
6
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 43 PS Labor 333.105 – Exemptions
7
Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. Regulations for Minimum Wage – 34 Pa Code Chapter 231
8
Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. File a Minimum Wage and Overtime Complaint
9
Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. File a Wage Payment and Collection Complaint
10
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 43 PS Labor 333.113 – Civil and Criminal Penalties
11
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 43 PS Labor 260.10 – Civil Action