What Is the Current Minimum Wage in Texas? Tipped, Youth, and Overtime Rules

The current minimum wage in Texas is $7.25 per hour, the same as the federal rate. Texas Labor Code Section 62.051 ties the state wage floor directly to the federal minimum set by the Fair Labor Standards Act, so the Texas number moves automatically whenever Congress changes the federal one.¹ The $7.25 rate has been in place since July 2009, the last time the federal minimum went up.²

That $7.25 applies to most hourly workers in the state. A few categories of employees can legally be paid a lower cash wage, and a few are exempt from the minimum wage rules entirely. The rest of this article walks through those situations and what to do if you aren’t being paid what you’re owed.

Tipped Workers Can Be Paid $2.13 Per Hour in Cash

Employers in Texas can pay tipped employees a cash wage as low as $2.13 per hour, as long as the employee’s tips bring total hourly pay up to at least $7.25. This is called a tip credit, and it’s authorized by Texas Labor Code Section 62.052, which incorporates the federal tip-credit rules.³ If your tips in a given workweek don’t close the gap, your employer has to make up the difference.

A tipped employee under federal rules is someone who regularly takes in more than $30 per month in tips.⁴ The Texas statute uses a $20 threshold, but since most Texas workers are covered by the FLSA, the $30 federal figure is what applies in practice for nearly all tipped jobs.

An employer has to tell you certain things before claiming a tip credit: the cash wage being paid, the amount being claimed as a tip credit, that the credit can’t be more than the tips you actually earn, and that your tips are yours unless a valid tip pool is in place.⁴ If your employer skipped that notice, they lose the right to use the tip credit at all and owe you the full $7.25 in direct wages.

Tip pooling is allowed. When the employer takes a tip credit, the pool can only include workers who customarily receive tips, such as servers, bussers, and bartenders. When the employer pays the full $7.25 and takes no credit, the pool can also include back-of-house staff like cooks and dishwashers. Managers and supervisors can put their own tips into a pool but cannot take from it.⁵

Workers Under 20 Can Be Paid $4.25 for 90 Days

New employees under age 20 can be paid a training wage of $4.25 per hour during their first 90 consecutive calendar days with an employer. The clock runs on the calendar, not on days actually worked, so weekends and days off count toward the 90.⁶

If you turn 20 before the 90 days are up, your pay has to go to at least $7.25 starting on your birthday. Employers also can’t fire or cut the hours of existing workers to swap in cheaper youth hires, and they can’t cycle through a parade of under-20 workers every 90 days to keep paying the lower rate.⁶

Overtime Pay

Texas has no separate overtime law, so federal rules apply. If you’re a covered employee and you work more than 40 hours in a single workweek, every hour past 40 has to be paid at a minimum of one and a half times your regular rate.⁷ For a worker making $7.25 an hour, that’s at least $10.88 per overtime hour.

Salaried workers in executive, administrative, or professional roles can be exempt from overtime, but only if their actual duties qualify and they earn at least the federal salary threshold. That threshold is currently $684 per week, or $35,568 per year.⁸ A salaried employee earning below that number is generally owed overtime no matter what their title says.

Who Isn’t Covered by the Minimum Wage

Several categories of workers fall outside Texas minimum wage protections entirely. The main ones are:

Household employees working in a private home, including babysitters and live-in caregivers.⁹
Members of religious orders, ordained ministers, and some workers at camps or facilities run by religious, educational, or charitable organizations.⁹
Bona fide executive, administrative, and professional employees, outside salespeople paid on commission, and elected officials, under Texas Labor Code Section 62.153.⁹
Workers under 18 who haven’t finished high school or a vocational training program.

One other exemption is worth knowing about because it sounds alarming and isn’t. Texas Labor Code Section 62.151 says the state’s minimum wage chapter doesn’t apply to workers already covered by the FLSA.¹⁰ In practice, most Texas workers are covered by the FLSA, so they get the federal $7.25 floor directly instead of the state version. The number is the same either way.

Independent contractors are not covered by minimum wage or overtime rules at all, because those protections only run to employees. Classification is based on what actually happens in the working relationship, not what a contract calls you.

Can a Texas City Set a Higher Minimum Wage?

No. Texas does not allow cities or counties to set their own private-sector minimum wage. Section 62.151 of the Labor Code expressly says that local ordinances or charter provisions governing wages in private employment don’t apply to workers covered by the FLSA.¹⁰ Since the FLSA covers most private-sector workers, no Texas city can require employers to pay more than $7.25. None currently do.

What to Do If You’re Being Underpaid

If an employer isn’t paying you the minimum wage, isn’t paying overtime, or hasn’t paid you at all, you have two main routes.

The first is a state wage claim under the Texas Payday Law, filed with the Texas Workforce Commission. You have 180 days from the date the wages were originally due to file. Claims go in online or by paper to TWC’s Wage and Hour Department, and you’ll need your employer’s name, address, and phone number, a breakdown of each type of unpaid wage, your math on the amount owed, and copies of recent pay stubs. TWC sends the claim to the employer, who has 14 days to respond, and then issues a Preliminary Wage Determination Order that either side can appeal.¹¹

The second is a federal complaint for minimum wage or overtime violations, filed with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division at 1-866-487-9243. Federal complaints are confidential, and it’s illegal for an employer to retaliate against you for filing one.¹²

What you can recover: back pay for the shortfall, plus an equal amount in liquidated damages under the FLSA, which effectively doubles what the employer owes. If you file your own lawsuit, you can also recover attorney’s fees and court costs. The lookback window is two years for ordinary violations and three years if the violation was willful, meaning the employer knew it was breaking the law or acted with reckless disregard.¹³

1
State of Texas. Texas Labor Code Section 62.051 – Minimum Wage
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 206 – Minimum Wage
3
State of Texas. Texas Labor Code Section 62.052 – Tipped Employees
4
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #15 – Tipped Employees Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
5
U.S. Department of Labor. Tip Regulations Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #32 – Youth Minimum Wage – Fair Labor Standards Act
7
U.S. Department of Labor. Overtime Pay
8
U.S. Department of Labor. Earnings Thresholds for the Executive, Administrative, and Professional Exemption
9
Texas Workforce Commission. Texas Labor Code Chapter 62 – Minimum Wage
10
State of Texas. Texas Labor Code Section 62.151 – Person Covered by Federal Act
11
Texas Workforce Commission. Texas Payday Law – Wage Claim
12
U.S. Department of Labor. How to File a Complaint
13
U.S. Department of Labor. Back Pay