3 Challenges to Tracking Minimum Wage Rates

Tracking minimum wage is an ongoing challenge. The mere sight or mention of the term may have you asking yourself, “What’s changed? When? What city has a new minimum wage rate? How does this impact our company?”

Well, you’re not alone! Here are the top three challenges that come with tracking minimum wage rates:

1. Keeping Track of State, County and City Minimum Wage Rates

We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of labor laws passed in states, counties and cities across the country. To date, the U.S. has 29 states, six counties and 32 cities with minimum wage laws.

We are seeing this increase because wages are changing to account for living factors specific to the geographic location. For example, major metropolitan areas tend to have higher cost of living, making higher wages a necessity. Also, local jurisdictions can pass and update laws at a quicker pace than at the federal level.

This presents a greater challenge for large companies to track how these laws affect all of their locations, as a single location could have four different minimum wages. How do you know which rate is correct?

2. Understanding Which Employees the Rate Applies To

Each minimum wage law is unique. The following factors can determine how the law applies to each company:

• Employer size
• Employee type (federal contractor, etc.)
• Company size
• Industry
• Tipped wages or non-tipped wages
• And more

Do you know which rates apply to your locations based on these factors?

3. Maintaining a Database of All Minimum Wage Rates

Where do you keep all this minimum wage data – in a spreadsheet? A Google Doc?

Not only is this process challenging, it’s unscalable- given the number and frequency of changes. It’s also manual, and therefore prone to human error.

Why should I be concerned about tracking minimum wage rates?

If you’re not on top of all these rates, you have the risk of being caught off guard, and facing back wage payments, wage litigation and/or loss of brand integrity.

What can I do to combat these challenges?

There has not been one single product or database that tracks minimum wage for you, until now.

In response to these challenges, GovDocs is thrilled to introduce our new product, GovDocs Minimum Wage – an online, data-driven application that provides the most up-to-date minimum wage rate and related details for each of your locations. To learn more, head over to our GovDocs Minimum Wage product page.