North Carolina minimum wage 2026

The North Carolina minimum wage is $7.25 an hour in 2026, the same as the federal minimum. Next door, the minimum wage is higher in Virginia and the same in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina; the South Carolina minimum wage page has its history.

No increase is scheduled, so it stays at $7.25 an hour in 2027.

Full time, a North Carolina minimum wage job pays $15,080 a year before tax. The $7.25 an hour page compares it in every state. The closest salary with its own page is $20,000 a year.

After taxes, full-time minimum wage work in North Carolina takes home $13,833 a year. Each paycheck every two weeks comes to $531.63. It takes 150.4 hours of work to take home $1,000. See the North Carolina income tax rate for the state's share. The North Carolina paycheck calculator shows any other wage or hours.

It is below the middle: $20 an hour is more than 37% of North Carolina workers earn, but less than half of them. The North Carolina median wage is $23.06 an hour.

Wage statistics cover employees in all jobs, full and part time, not the self-employed.

Tipped workers in North Carolina can be paid $2.13 an hour if tips bring them to at least $7.25.

The employer must make up the difference in any week tips fall short.

It has been $7.25 an hour since July 24, 2009, when the federal minimum last rose.

North Carolina is tied for last with 19 other states at $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum; the highest is Washington, DC at $18.40 an hour. The Indiana minimum wage is the same $7.25, and so are Oklahoma's and Wisconsin's. The state minimum wages page lists all of them.

1.6% of hourly workers in North Carolina earned the federal minimum of $7.25 or less in 2024.

Workers paid less than the minimum are mostly tipped or exempt from the law.