Texas Minimum Wage Law

Employers in Texas must conform with these state rules regarding the minimum wage paid to employees.

The minimum wage rate for Texas is $7.25 per hour.

The rate established under the Texas Minimum Wage Act supersedes a wage established in an ordinance, order or charter provision governing wages in private employment, other than wages under a public contract.

This provision does not apply to state or federal job training or workforce development programs or to a wage established under a contract or agreement between governmental and private entities.

The Texas minimum wage law applies to employees except:

• persons subject to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
• a person who is a member of a religious order while performing any service for or at the direction of the order and any duly ordained, commissioned, or licensed minister, priest, rabbi, sexton, or Christian Science reader while performing services for a church, synagogue, or religious organization
• a person under 18 who is not a high school or vocational training program graduate, and a person under 20 who is a regularly enrolled high school, college, university, or vocational training program student (however, this exemption does not apply to persons employed in agriculture who are paid on a piece-rate basis);
• bona fide executive, administrative or professional employees and public officials
• outside salespersons or collectors paid on a commission basis
• a person performing domestic service in or about private homes, including babysitting in or out of the employer's home, and a person while living in or about the home providing personal care for a resident of the home
• inmates of the state penitentiary or local jails
• a person engaged in activities of an educational, charitable, religious, or nonprofit organization in which the employer/employee relationship does not in fact exist or in which the services are rendered to the organization gratuitously
• a person employed by an immediate relative or in-law, guardian or person standing in place of an immediate relative, in-law or guardian
• handicapped persons under 22 who are clients of a vocational rehabilitation workshop and participating in a cooperative school-work program
• a person employed by an amusement or recreational establishment that does not operate for more than seven months of any calendar year, or whose average receipts for any six months of the preceding calendar year do not exceed 33.3 percent of its average receipts for the other six months of the same year
• a employee of the Boy Scouts of America, Girl Scouts of America, or affiliated organizations
• a person employed by any camp of a religious, educational, charitable or nonprofit organization
• a person employed in dairy farming
• a person, except those employed in agriculture, whose employer is not subject to liability for payment of contributions to the Unemployment Compensation Fund under the provisions of the Texas Unemployment Compensation Act, as amended
• persons employed with their spouses by nonprofit educational institutions to serve as parents of:
  • orphans or children with only one living parent; or
  • institutionalized children, if the employees live in and receive board and lodging from the institution

Under the Texas Minimum Wage Act, reduced wage provisions are in effect for certain employees in programs operated through the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation.