Florida

When will minimum wage go up again in Florida and how much? What is minimum wage in 2025?

Published

11 months ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

When will minimum wage go up again in Florida and how much? What is minimum wage in 2025?

Minimum wage workers in Florida, your paychecks will get another bump this year and the next on the way to $15 an hour.

That’s thanks to the amendment Floridians approved in 2020 to raise the wage incrementally, first from $8.65 to $10 in 2021 and then another dollar every year until it reaches $15 an hour for non-tipped employees and $10.98 for tipped employees.

It’s part of a growing trend for higher minimum wages. On Jan. 1, 2025. 21 states and 48 cities and counties raised theirs, according to a report provided exclusively to USA TODAY by the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group. More states and a few more cities and counties will be raising their minimum later this year.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour and has been since 2009.

What will Florida’s minimum wage be in 2025?

Florida’s minimum wage will become $14 an hour for non-tipped employees and $10.98 for tipped employees.

When will Florida’s minimum wage rise again?

The minimum wage rates for both tipped and non-tipped employees will rise on Sept. 30, 2025, and will rise again in 2026.

Florida passes $15 minimum wage Amendment 2

Florida voters approve raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour.

Rob Landers, FLORIDA TODAY

Which states have the highest minimum wage?

Several states have passed minimum wage increases in recent years. The current highest minimum wages in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, are:

Washington D.C.: $17.50 an hour
California: $16.50 an hour
Washington state: $16.66 an hour
Connecticut: $16.35
New York (New York City, Nassau County, Suffolk County, & Westchester County): $16.50 an hour
New Jersey: $15.49 an hour
Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, rest of New York, Rhode Island: $15 an hour

Fourteen states pay the federal minimum rate of $7.25, as all states must do at a minimum for jobs covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Some have higher rates for businesses that meet certain conditions.

Georgia and Wyoming businesses pay $5.15 an hour, although in Georgia it only applies to employers of six or more employees. In Montana, businesses with gross annual sales of less than $110,000 pay $4 an hour.

Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee have no state minimum wage law.

What is the highest minimum wage in the country?

Burien, Washington will set its minimum pay at $21.16 for employers in King County with 500 or more workers.

What happens after Florida’s minimum wage hits the $15 cap?

The amendment was intended to get minimum wages more in line with current costs of living. After it reaches $15, the state will return to the previous method of calculating cost-of-living adjustments tied to the Consumer Price Index.

What is the living wage in Florida?

The minimum wage is different from a living wage, however, which tries to calculate how much a person needs to earn per hour to afford the necessities — housing, childcare, health care, food, etc. — where they live.

In February 2024, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) living wage calculator found that the living wage in Florida is $22.43 an hour for one adult with no children, $37.27 for an adult with one child, $45.36 for an adult with two children and $58.76 for an adult with three children.

How is the minimum wage for tipped employees calculated in Florida?

Employers of tipped employees must pay their employees minimum wage, but they can count the tips the employees receive toward it up to the maximum of $3.02, the allowable Fair Labor Standards Act tip credit of 2003. So the direct wage they must pay is the minimum wage minus $3.02.

The current minimum wage in Florida is $13 an hour, so the tipped minimum wage is $9.98. Both will go up a dollar each until they reach $15 an hour for non-tipped employees and $11.98 for tipped employees.

Do minimum wage laws in Florida apply to all employers?

No, there are certain occupations and situations where the Department of Labor allowed exemptions to the federal minimum wage law where employees may be paid less. These include, among others:

Executive, administrative and professional employees
Commissioned sales employees
Farm workers
Seasonal or recreational establishment workers
Newspaper delivery people
Federal criminal investigators
Informal workers such as babysitters
Minors under certain circumstances
Student workers
Employees with disabilities if the employer has a certificate from the Department of Labor allowing it (a measure to encourage more employers to hire people with disabilities)
Nonprofit or educational organizations that have applied for an exemption, and others.
Employees of enterprises with an annual gross income of less than $50,000

What was the minimum wage in Florida before?

Florida’s minimum wage was tied to the federal minimum wage created in 1938 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 which set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, banned oppressive child labor and capped the maximum workweek at 44 hours. But in 2005, Florida voters approved Amendment 5 to establish a state minimum wage over the federal standard. Florida has paid its minimum wage workers more than the federal minimum ever since.

Amendment 5 brought the hourly wage for non-tipped employees to $6.15, a dollar more than the federal minimum at the time, and required the Department of Economic Opportunity to calculate an adjusted state minimum wage rate based on the rate of inflation for the 12 months prior to Sept. 1, based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. New adjustments were to take effect the following Jan. 1.

There have been several increases since:

2005: Raised to $6.15 an hour
2006: Raised to $6.40 an hour
2009: Raised to $7.21 an hour
2010: Raised to $7.25 an hour
2016: After 6 years, raised to $8.05 an hour
2017: Raised to $8.10 an hour
2018: Raised to $8.25 an hour
2019: Raised to $8.45 an hour
2021: Raised to $10 an hour to meet requirements from the 2020 amendment
2022: Raised to $11 an hour
2023: Raised to $12 an hour
2024: Raised to $13 an hour

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Florida

Florida’s complete 2026 football schedule unveiled

Published

11 hours ago

December 12, 2025

Press Room

Florida’s complete 2026 football schedule unveiled

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The 2026 football schedule for the Florida Gators has been set. Next year’s slate was unveiled Thursday night on SEC Network.

The most notable dates are Florida’s SEC opener on Sept. 19 — a Week 3 trip to Auburn, where the Gators haven’t played since 2011 — along with a road game at Texas on Oct. 17 and home games against Ole Miss (Sept. 26) and Oklahoma (Nov. 7).

Next season will mark the Sooners’ first-ever visit to Gainesville. The teams have previously played twice in the postseason, with the Gators defeating Oklahoma 24-14 in their first-ever meeting to win the 2008 national championship.

The Gators open the season in The Swamp on Sept. 5 against Florida Atlantic. UF’s other non-conference opponents will be Campbell (Sept. 12) and at Florida State (Nov. 28).

Florida is also hosting South Carolina (Oct. 10) and Vanderbilt (Nov. 21). The Gators haven’t played the Gamecocks or the Commodores since 2023.

UF takes on Georgia in Atlanta on Oct. 31 after the bye week. Florida’s other road games are Missouri (Oct. 3), Texas (Oct. 17) and Kentucky (Nov. 14).

The Gators will be led by first-year coach Jon Sumrall. He won the American Conference title with Tulane last week and has the Green Wave in the College Football Playoffs. They will have a rematch against Ole Miss on Dec. 20 in the first round after losing in Oxford, 45-10, on Sept. 20.

Sumrall was back in Gainesville this week to assemble his staff. So far, he has hired offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner, defensive coordinator Brade White and defensive line coach Gerald Chatman.

Date	Opponent	Location
Sept. 5	Florida Atlantic	Gainesville, Florida
Sept. 12	Campbell	Gainesville, Florida
Sept. 19	at Auburn	Auburn, Alabama
Sept. 26	Ole Miss	Gainesville, Florida
Oct. 3	at Missouri	Columbia, Missouri
Oct. 10	South Carolina	Gainesville, Florida
Oct. 17	at Texas	Austin, Texas
Oct. 24	Bye
Oct. 31	Georgia	Atlanta, Georgia
Nov. 7	Oklahoma	Gainesville, Florida
Nov. 14	at Kentucky	Lexington, Kentucky
Nov. 21	Vanderbilt	Gainesville, Florida
Nov. 28	at Florida State	Tallahassee, Florida

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Florida

Florida basketball has failed to meet expectations early on

Published

23 hours ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

Florida basketball has failed to meet expectations early on

A 5-4 start to Florida basketball’s national title defense is not what anyone had in mind — much less, the Gator Nation — but here we are nine games deep into the 2025-26 schedule.

To be fair, three of those losses have come against programs currently ranked among the top five in both major polls and have been off to stellar starts. The Arizona Wildcats, Duke Blue Devils and UConn Huskies are nothing to sneeze at, and while the TCU Horned Frogs are not quite on their tier, all of these losses came either on the road (Duke) or on a neutral court (the other three).

Maybe Todd Golden should reconsider playing in all of these early-season special events in the future. But alas, that is a story for another season.

ESPN thinks Florida has failed to meet expectations

Obviously, with a dominating frontcourt roster returning in full, there was plenty to be optimistic about heading into the campaign. However, the departure of three guards to the NBA and a fourth to the transfer portal has proven to be a void too large to fill with their offseason acquisitions.

And that is the crux of ESPN’s Myron Medcalf’s observation that the Gators have simply not met the bar so far.

“Months after winning a national title with an elite set of guards, Florida’s Todd Golden rebooted his backcourt with former Arkansas star Boogie Fland and Princeton transfer Xaivian Lee,” he begins.

“It hasn’t worked out as planned. In Florida’s two-player lineups — an on-court metric at EvanMiya.com that captures how teams perform when specific players are paired together — the Fland-Lee combination ranked 26th within its own team,” Metcalf continues.

“And though Lee scored 19 points against UConn in Tuesday’s game at Madison Square Garden, that loss was another example of the Gators’ limitations when Lee and Fland (1-for-9 combined from 3 against the Huskies) aren’t equally elite on the same night.”

He has not liked what he has seen, and his conclusion is not necessarily unfair.

“Ultimately, Florida hasn’t looked like a defending champion thus far, despite Thomas Haugh (18.6 PPG, 7.6 RPG, 2.8 APG) playing like an All-American.”

How does the NET, BPI and KenPom view Florida basketball?

While Medcalf’s assessment comes fully equipped with dark clouds, the objective metrics paint a much more optimistic outlook for the team overall.

According to the NET rankings, Florida is just inside the top 25 at No. 24 — one spot ahead of the Miami Hurricanes, who they beat in Jacksonville back in November. The Gators are 1-3 in Quadrant 1 matchups, 1-1 in Quad 2, 1-0 in Quad 3 and 2-0 in Quad 4.

KenPom views the Orange and Blue even more bullishly, ranking Florida at No. 15 despite the weak record. Golden’s gang currently sits at No. 15 with a plus-26.55 adjusted net rating — up from plus-25.70 (17th) at the end of November, while the offense (120.4) moved up from 24th to 23rd in the nation, and the defense (93.8) has only dropped one place — from 10th to 11th — despite allowing 0.6 fewer points per 100 possessions.

The most optimistic metric for Florida comes from ESPN’s Basketball Power Index, which has the Gators at No. 9 despite a 1-3 stretch over the past two weeks. They have an 18.8 overall BPI, with the offense logging in at 8.5 (22nd) and defense earning a 10.3 (8th) rating recently.

ESPN projects Florida to go 21.0-10.0 overall and 12.2-5.8 in conference play.

Follow us @GatorsWire on X, formerly known as Twitter, as well as Bluesky, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Florida Gators news, notes and opinions.

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Florida

Florida accuses Starbucks of discriminating against White workers

Published

1 day ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

Florida accuses Starbucks of discriminating against White workers

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on Wednesday that his office is suing Starbucks over what he termed “race-based quotas.”

Uthmeier revealed the suit on social media, claiming that Starbucks used diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies to discriminate in hiring and advancement.

“Starbucks made DEI more than a slogan,” he said. “They turned it into a mandatory hiring and promotion system based on race.”

Starbucks used DEI to implement illegal race-based policies for hiring and advancement.
Using DEI as an excuse to hire, promote, or humiliate an employee based on race violates Florida’s civil rights law, and we just filed a lawsuit to hold Starbucks accountable. pic.twitter.com/e3pK0GguQ0
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— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) December 10, 2025

In a complaint, state officials listed out their evidence of the alleged discrimination, including the following situations:

A 2020 public report pushes to hire “people of color” in 40% of retail and distribution center jobs, and 30% of corporate positions by 2025.
A 2024 report talks about executive bonuses conditioned on certain DEI goals, including mentorship programs and retention rate quotas for “BIPOC” employees. Officials said this was swapped for “belonging” goals in 2025.
In the same report, shareholders asked Starbucks to create an audit to determine whether the company’s practices were discriminating against “‘non-diverse’ employees” amid concerns over the company’s emphasis on networking opportunities for people with “shared identities.”
Shareholders similarly expressed that membership in these so-called “Partner Networks” was often based on traits like race, sex and sexual orientation, with no networks for “non-diverse” groups.
A 2025 report discusses an ongoing goal to increase the number of “people of color” working in management positions and above by at least 1.5% by FY2026.

Because of these incidents, state officials argued that Starbucks’ policies deliberately discriminated against those from certain “disfavored” races — meaning White people and, up until last year, multiracial and Asian people.

This isn’t the first time that Starbucks has faced these sorts of claims, either. In 2023, a White Starbucks employee was awarded over $25 million after she claimed that her race was used as a factor in her firing.

[BELOW: Starbucks around the US close in 2019 for anti-bias training]

Now, state officials are saying they’ve heard from residents in the Sunshine State who reported their own experiences of racial discrimination.

“Florida residents have contacted the Attorney General and reported that (Starbucks) paid them and their white coworkers lower wages because of their race, refused to hire them or promote them because of their race, created a hostile work environment in which Florida residents felt humiliation, and were excluded from certain mentorship or networking programs because of their race,” the complaint reads.

As such, the Attorney General’s office is accusing Starbucks of violating the state’s Civil Rights Act.

[BELOW: Video shows good Samaritans stop man trying to carjack customers at Starbucks in Florida]

By extension, the Attorney General is pushing for injunctive relief, compensation, and $10,000 penalties for each instance of racial discrimination that the company may have committed against a Florida resident, which Uthmeier’s office estimates to be at least in the “tens of millions.”

Starbucks provided a statement to News 6 following news of the lawsuit, which reads as follows:

“We disagree. We are deeply committed to creating opportunity for every single one of our partners (employees). Our programs and benefits are open to everyone and lawful. Our hiring practices are inclusive, fair and competitive, and designed to ensure the strongest candidate for every job, every time.”
Starbucks spokesperson

Meanwhile, you can read the full complaint below.

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