Methodology & Data Provenance

This page explains how sources, dated rate schedules, and calculator assumptions are used. The October 18, 2026 review checked current general wage floors in all 50 states and DC, examined the issue briefs and reference summaries, completed a targeted public-record review of all 64 case-library cards and identified later treatment, and corrected material calculator rules against primary sources. Review dates describe a completed review cycle; they do not promise that every proposition has been continuously monitored or that every case has a comprehensive subsequent-history report.

The sourcing hierarchy#

Wage-and-hour figures decay. Rates index annually, ordinances are amended mid-cycle, and secondary write-ups quietly fall out of date while still ranking well in search. We therefore source in a strict order, and a figure's place in that order determines how much weight it can carry:

1. Operative statute, regulation, or ordinance text. The codified law itself — a Labor Code section, a CFR part, a municipal code chapter — and controlling judicial decisions establish the governing rule: a cap, a formula, a premium multiplier, a consent requirement. Where a city publishes its code through a hosting service (American Legal, Municode, eCode360), we cite the hosted section and treat it as primary.
2. Official agency publications. Department of Labor fact sheets and opinion letters, state labor department rate notices, city wage-office posters and bulletins. These are authoritative for current dollar figures — especially CPI-adjusted rates that the statute states only as a formula — and for an agency's enforcement position. When an agency notice and our reading of the statute diverge, we publish the agency figure and note the divergence.
3. Reputable secondary alerts — management-side firm bulletins, legal trade press, established local journalism. These are used only as pointers: they tell us that something changed and where to look. A secondary alert is never, by itself, the source of a published figure. If a firm bulletin reports a new rate and we cannot confirm it against the ordinance text or an agency publication, the figure stays out and the change is described qualitatively until it can be confirmed.

Each data record carries its own source list with access dates, and those sources are reproduced on the pages built from the record — every state guide ends with the official sources its figures came from, and the hotel ordinance brief does the same per ordinance.

Verified vs. estimated: a taxonomy the tools enforce#

The distinction between "we verified this" and "we are projecting this" is not a footnote here — it is structural. The site's data layer encodes verification status in machine-readable form, and the calculators change their behavior based on it. The concrete idioms:

The operating rule When a parameter cannot be verified from the first two tiers of the hierarchy, the tools disclose instead of compute. A wrong number presented confidently is worse than a stated gap: operators staff and budget against these figures, and an unverified cap or premium multiplier could induce a real-world violation. We accept the cost — occasionally a tool tells you less than a marketing page would — in exchange for never silently approximating.

Review cadence and what the dates mean#

Two date fields appear throughout the site, and they make different promises:

• lastReviewed (shown on every page as "Last reviewed" or "Verified as of") is the date of the documented source-review cycle for the page or record. It is not the date the law changed and not an auto-updated timestamp — a page rebuilt today with unreviewed data keeps its old date. The date is not a certification that every cited authority has been exhaustively checked for subsequent treatment.
• accessed (shown beside each source link) is the date the cited source was retrieved. A figure is only as fresh as its access date; if an agency reissues a notice after our access date, the site may lag until the next review.

Scheduled rate steps are recorded as dated entries — a rate and the date it takes effect — taken from enacted schedules, never from proposals. Rate schedules are checked against their effective dates. The static compliance calendar is reviewed alongside the data; it must be updated separately and can otherwise fall out of sync. Where a statute indexes a rate instead of stating a dollar figure, the step is recorded as "CPI-adjusted" until the agency announces the number.

Mid-week steps get specific handling: wage floors change on dates like January 1 and July 1, which rarely land on a workweek boundary. The workweek auditor resolves the applicable wage floor per day, so a July 1 ordinance increase that lands on a Wednesday is applied to Wednesday through Sunday at the new rate and Monday through Tuesday at the old one — the same way an auditor would reconstruct the week.

What the tools deliberately do not compute#

The calculators are educational instruments that show their arithmetic, with citations, so a controller or counsel can check every step. They are not a payroll system, a damages model, or legal advice. By design they do not:

• Render legal conclusions. The exemption checker produces a structured issue-spotting summary, not a classification; the exposure modeler labels its own output an educational estimate, not a damages calculation.
• Compute rules whose parameters are unverified — the workloadRules: null and computed: false behavior described above.
• Model every state quirk. Where a rule is simplified (for example, an earnings-dependent daily-overtime trigger), the tool says so in its on-page notes rather than implying completeness.
• Substitute for the source documents. Statutes, regulations, and ordinances summarized here are simplified for orientation; the source documents control. See the full disclaimer.

Known gaps we have chosen to disclose rather than model#

The policy: when a law exists but a computational parameter is unverified, we publish the law's existence, its citation, and a qualitative summary — and we list the gap here, so the absence of a number is never mistaken for the absence of an obligation. The gaps currently known to us:

• Municipal workload rules. The October 2026 review retrieved the enacted LA County, Glendale, and Long Beach text and corrected their distinct special-room, proration, and premium rules. These are no longer modeled merely by analogy to another city. Coverage, waivers, actual cleaning time, and other required inputs still must be established for the property.
• Kentucky's seventh-day overtime (KRS 337.050). Time-and-a-half is owed for the seventh day when an employee works all seven days in a workweek and is permitted to exceed 40 hours. Because that premium overlaps the FLSA weekly overtime the workweek auditor already computes and turns on the 40-hour proviso, the tool flags it for review rather than pricing the same hours twice.
• Alternative overtime methods. The stacked workweek auditor uses the default weighted-average method and does not apply fluctuating-workweek, §7(i), or §7(g)(2) elections. The separate exemption checker tests the §7(i) conditions, while the regular-rate tool offers its own disclosed alternative pay methods. Their availability depends on the governing law and the employee’s actual pay arrangement.
• Washington's Demetrio rule for non-agricultural piece-rate workers. The housekeeper auditor computes the separate rest-break pay Demetrio v. Sakuma requires, but no Washington appellate decision has extended that holding from agriculture to non-agricultural piece-rate workers such as hotel housekeepers (WAC 296-126-092); the tool computes it on the identical regulatory language while labeling it a litigation-risk position, not settled law.
• New York uniform-maintenance pay. 12 NYCRR 146-1.7 requires weekly uniform-maintenance pay (three hour-band tiers with regional dollar amounts) when the employer does not launder required uniforms. The rule is real and flagged (computed: false); the current dollar amounts live in the NYSDOL Part 146 summary and are not computed by these tools.
• Hawaii and Washington credit-card-fee silence. Neither state's law (nor controlling case law we have verified) squarely answers whether a pro-rata card-processing offset against tips is permitted, so their tip-pool records carry no ccFee rule at all — the tip-pool architect stays silent rather than importing the federal answer into a state that may reject it.
• New York meal-period remedies. Labor Law §162 violations carry NYSDOL enforcement exposure, not a formulaic California-style premium hour, so the engine records no premium formula for New York meal periods and the tools compute none.
• Washington meal remedies. The auditor now accepts individual waivers, paid interrupted meals, accumulated respite, additional meals, and timing facts. It separately estimates missing respite under Androckitis v. Virginia Mason, while actual work remains in paid hours; completed late meals produce an unpriced timing finding. Overtime valuation remains an expressly selected, fact-dependent scenario. The Washington Supreme Court granted review in Bennett, No. 104937-4, on April 28, 2026. The court’s fall docket and the actual argument recording confirm that the case was argued and submitted September 29. No merits opinion appears in the court’s 2026 opinion index checked October 18, 2026.
• Penalty multipliers on tip theories in Washington, New Jersey, and D.C. The exposure modeler includes supplied withheld-tip amounts in back pay but does not apply these state records’ wage multipliers to that line. This is a disclosed model boundary, not a conclusion that the law forecloses enhanced remedies for every gratuity claim. Analyze the particular cause of action and applicable authority.
• The §7(i) retail-or-service-establishment status is attested, not computed. The exemption checker tests the two numeric §7(i) prongs (the regular-rate floor and the more-than-half-commissions share) but takes the threshold establishment question as a user attestation — whether a hotel spa qualifies as a distinct retail-or-service establishment is a fact-intensive judgment the regulation does not reduce to a formula.
• Deferred and California flat-sum bonuses. The regular-rate calculator now supports allocation to actual earned weeks, and hour-weighted or equal-week fallback allocation when appropriate under 29 CFR 778.209. Its California flat-sum calculation handles a single workweek using the actual non-overtime-hours divisor and full overtime and double-time bonus increments. Alvarado’s April 25, 2018 modification reserved the workweek-versus-pay-period issue, so the deferred multi-week allocator does not apply a California flat-sum formula across an entire pay period.
• Nevada’s workday reconstruction differs between tools. The tipped overtime calculator applies Nevada's earnings gate (daily overtime only below 1.5× the minimum wage) but requires supplied daily hours rather than reconstructing shift times. The workweek auditor anchors each 24-hour workday to that day’s first shift start under NRS 608.0126; entered shift segments identify additional daily overtime without double-counting hours already classified.

This list is maintained alongside the data itself and is expected to change: when a gap is verified, the parameter moves into the computed layer and comes off this list; when a new law arrives faster than its codified text, it goes on. If you can point us at primary text that closes one of these gaps, the about page explains how to reach us.

The portfolio forecaster applies West Hollywood’s verified 1% minimum and 4% maximum annual hotel-wage adjustment under Resolution 24-035 §§3–5. Future CPI inputs remain scenarios; the tool distinguishes those estimates from the city’s published wage rates.

Numbers the site computes for itself#

Worked examples and calculator outputs are checked together, but the prose is stored separately and is not automatically regenerated by an engine change. The review therefore checks the example’s facts, applicable rate, arithmetic, and legal assumptions, and adds calculation regressions where they guard against a material error.

Verifying a figure yourself#

Every published number is meant to be checkable. The replication recipe:

1. Find the record. A rate or rule lives in a specific data record — a state guide's sources list, an ordinance entry, an engine rule. Each page ends with the official sources its figures came from, so start there.
2. Read the source and its access date. Every source carries an accessed date; a figure is only as current as that date. If the agency reissued a notice after it, the site may lag until the next review.
3. Go to the operative text. For a rule — a cap, a premium multiplier, a consent requirement — confirm against the statute, regulation, or ordinance itself (the authorities map says where each lives); for a current CPI-indexed dollar figure, confirm against the agency rate notice.
4. If text and figure diverge, the better source controls. The site publishes the agency figure and notes any divergence from a literal reading of the statute; if you can show a published figure is stale or wrong against primary text, that text wins — and the about page explains how to reach us.

Citation conventions and corrections#

Citations follow a consistent shorthand, decoded in full on the authorities map: statutes as title-code-section (29 U.S.C. §207), regulations as title-CFR-part.section (29 CFR 531.59(b)), and cases as parties, volume, reporter, page, year. The site cites to the most authoritative layer that fixes a given figure — the statute or regulation for a rule, the agency notice for a current indexed rate — and never treats a secondary alert as the source of a number. New legal propositions are added only when traceable to primary text or official guidance; where a point cannot be verified, it is stated at the level of generality the evidence supports rather than dressed in an invented citation. Corrections are welcome and routed through the about page; when one lands, the affected record's lastReviewed date advances and, if the change is material, it appears in the developments feed.