New York wage & hour rules for hotels

Wage-and-hour ground rules for hotel and hospitality employers in New York — minimum wage, tipped-employee rules, overtime, breaks, premium pay, and the hotel-specific obligations that apply on top. Figures below were last reviewed on June 12, 2026; most rates adjust annually.

Verified as of June 12, 2026 — every figure on this page was checked against the official sources listed at the bottom on that date. How we verify →

Minimum wage#

The New York minimum wage is $17.00 per hour, effective January 1, 2026. Regional, state-set rates (not local ordinances): $17.00 in NYC and Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties; $16.00 in the remainder of the state — both effective 1/1/2026 (final fixed steps of the FY2024 budget deal). From 1/1/2027 both rates are indexed to the 3-year moving average of CPI-W (Northeast), with an 'off-ramp' pausing increases in bad economic years.

Local minimum wages in New York#

Preemption New York preempts local minimum wage ordinances — cities and counties cannot set their own general wage floors.

Tipped employees & tip pooling#

New York allows a tip credit: employers may pay tipped employees a cash wage of $11.35 and claim up to $5.65 per hour in tips toward the minimum wage. Hospitality Industry Wage Order (12 NYCRR Part 146) governs hotels and restaurants. No tip credit on any day an employee works a non-tipped occupation for 2+ hours or more than 20% of the shift. Service-employee credits evaporate in any week tips fall below the thresholds above. WRITTEN NOTICE IS MANDATORY: the tip credit is unavailable unless the employer gave prior written notice of the cash wage, tip credit amount, and tip-retention rights (12 NYCRR 146-2.2 and Labor Law 195(1)), in English and the employee's primary language — a strict-liability gotcha in NY hotel litigation. Overtime for tipped staff is computed at 1.5x the FULL minimum wage minus the tip credit, never 1.5x the cash wage.

Tip pooling#

Labor Law 196-d: no employer or agent (including managers with meaningful authority) may demand or accept any part of employee tips; tip sharing/pooling is allowed only among food service workers/service employees in eligible occupations (12 NYCRR 146-2.14 to 146-2.17). Barenboim v. Starbucks (N.Y. 2013) draws the supervisor line at 'meaningful authority'. (N.Y. Lab. Law 196-d; 12 NYCRR 146-2.14)

See the federal baseline rules in our tip credit and tip pooling briefs — the stricter of federal or New York law controls.

Overtime#

Overtime is due after 40 hours in a workweek. 40-hour weekly standard (44 hours for residential/live-in employees) under 12 NYCRR 146-1.4; no daily overtime. Exempt-status misclassification is policed against the state salary floors below.

Run the math — including the tipped-overtime trap — with the tipped overtime calculator.

Meal & rest breaks#

Meal breaks: Labor Law 162: 30-minute noonday meal period for shifts over 6 hours spanning 11 a.m.-2 p.m.; an additional 20-minute break between 5-7 p.m. for shifts starting before 11 a.m. and running past 7 p.m.; 45 minutes mid-shift for shifts starting between 1 p.m. and 6 a.m. Applies to hotel staff. (N.Y. Lab. Law 162)

Rest breaks: Not required by New York law.

Scheduling & premium pay#

• Reporting-time pay: Hospitality call-in pay (12 NYCRR 146-1.5): an employee who reports to work must be paid at least 3 hours for one shift (or the scheduled shift length if shorter) at the applicable minimum rate.
• Split-shift premium: None.
• Spread of hours: 12 NYCRR 146-1.6: one EXTRA HOUR at the basic minimum wage ($17.00/$16.00 by region) whenever the spread of hours — interval from start to end of the workday, including breaks and split-shift gaps — exceeds 10 hours. Applies to all hospitality employees regardless of pay rate. A staple claim for hotel housekeepers and banquet staff on split shifts.

Service charges & gratuities#

Any charge 'purported to be a gratuity' must be paid over to service staff (Labor Law 196-d; Samiento v. World Yacht, N.Y. 2008). Under 12 NYCRR 146-2.18/2.19 a banquet/event service charge is PRESUMED a gratuity unless the employer clearly discloses, in writing on contracts and bills, that it is an administrative charge not distributed to staff. Core exposure for hotel banquet and catering operations. (N.Y. Lab. Law 196-d; 12 NYCRR 146-2.18, 146-2.19) Background: service charges, auto-gratuities & resort fees.

Pay administration#

• Pay frequency: Labor Law 191: 'manual workers' — which includes hotel housekeepers, porters, maintenance, and most physical-work hotel staff — must be paid WEEKLY within 7 calendar days of the workweek's end; clerical/other workers at least semimonthly. Large employers (1,000+ in NY) may seek NYSDOL authorization for semimonthly pay. A 2025 budget amendment limited damages for first-time 'frequency-only' violations (wages paid, just late) to lost interest, defusing the post-Vega v. CM & Associates class-action wave — but weekly pay for housekeepers remains mandatory.
• Wage statements: Wage Theft Prevention Act: hiring notice (rate, tip credit claimed, payday, employer identity) under Labor Law 195(1) and detailed wage statements each payday under 195(3), in English and primary language. Penalties up to $50/workday (max $5,000) for notice violations and $250/workday (max $5,000) for statement violations, per employee. (N.Y. Lab. Law 195, 198)
• Exempt salary floor: $1275.00/week (state) — Executive/administrative exemption salary floors, 1/1/2026: $1,275.00/week ($66,300/yr) in NYC/Nassau/Suffolk/Westchester; $1,199.10/week ($62,353.20/yr) remainder of state. No NY salary floor for the professional exemption (federal $684 applies). Verified via NYSDOL-reported 2026 updates.
• Lodging credit: Meal and lodging credits capped at the amounts in the Part 146 wage order summary (updated each Jan. 1; e.g., meal credit roughly $4.05-$4.10 per meal in 2026, with hourly lodging caps for all-year hotel staff) — take credits only at the current NYSDOL summary figures.

Hotel-dense compliance stack: Part 146 tiers with the resort-hotel tip thresholds; spread-of-hours; 3-hour call-in pay; uniform maintenance pay when employer doesn't launder required uniforms (2026 weekly rates up to $21.10 downstate / $19.85 rest of state for 30+ hr weeks, with medium/low rates for shorter weeks); weekly pay for manual workers under Labor Law 191; and the banquet service-charge presumption. NYC adds the Safe Hotels Act (Local Law 104 of 2024: hotel licensing, direct-employment requirement for core staff, panic buttons) — operational but with wage-structure consequences for subcontracted housekeeping.

Practitioner's notes: hotels in New York#

New York hotels do not run on the general labor law; they run on the Hospitality Industry Wage Order, 12 NYCRR Part 146 — a separate constitution with its own tipped tiers, day-shape pay rules, and presumptions. The numbers above come from it. Here is how it behaves in practice.

Part 146 tip credits: tiers, thresholds, and the surviving 80/20 rule#

Part 146 splits tipped hotel staff into two occupations with different math. Food service workers — servers, bartenders, bussers — take a cash wage of $11.35 downstate and $10.70 in the rest of the state, against credits of $5.65 and $5.30. Service employees — bell staff, door staff, and other non-food tipped roles — get a smaller credit ($14.15 cash / $2.85 downstate), and that credit exists only in weeks when tips actually average the threshold: at least $3.65 an hour in a restaurant or all-year hotel, but $9.55 in a resort hotel (upstate: $3.40 and $9.00). The resort-hotel tier is the one operators miss: a seasonal property must verify, week by week, that bell staff clear a much higher tip bar before claiming even the small credit — payroll needs a weekly true-up routine, not an annual one. Two further features now have no federal analogue. New York's 80/20/two-hour rule survived the 2024 federal vacatur: on any day an employee spends more than two hours or more than 20% of the shift on non-tipped work, the credit disappears for that day. And the tip-credit notice must be in writing, in English and the employee's primary language, before the credit is taken (12 NYCRR 146-2.2; Labor Law 195(1)) — the Wage Theft Prevention Act's hiring notices and per-payday statements carry their own per-employee penalties, and a missing tip-credit notice voids the credit for the entire period. Overtime for tipped staff is 1.5x the full minimum wage minus the credit, never 1.5x the cash wage — run it through the tipped overtime calculator, and see tip credit fundamentals.

Call-in pay, spread of hours, and uniform maintenance#

Three Part 146 rules shape the hotel workday. Call-in pay: anyone who reports to work is owed at least three hours at the applicable minimum rate (or the full scheduled shift if shorter) — a banquet department that releases staff when an event runs light pays for the privilege. Spread of hours: whenever the interval from first clock-in to last clock-out exceeds ten hours — including breaks and split-shift gaps — the employee is owed one extra hour at the basic minimum ($17.00 downstate / $16.00 upstate), and in hospitality this applies regardless of how much the employee earns. A breakfast/banquet split or a housekeeping double triggers it routinely. Uniform maintenance: if the hotel does not launder required uniforms, weekly maintenance pay is owed — up to $21.10 downstate / $19.85 upstate for full-time weeks in 2026, with lower tiers for shorter weeks — unless the wash-and-wear exemption is genuinely satisfied. Each is a small number per person and a class-action engine in aggregate; bake them into scheduling rules rather than chasing them in payroll.

§191 weekly pay: housekeepers are manual workers#

Labor Law §191 requires manual workers to be paid weekly, within seven calendar days of the workweek's end, and NYSDOL treats anyone spending more than a quarter of their time on physical labor as manual — which sweeps in room attendants, porters, maintenance, and most banquet staff. The May 2025 budget amendment took the catastrophic edge off: for a first violation, if wages were otherwise paid at least semi-monthly on schedule, damages are limited to lost interest rather than full liquidated damages. But it did not change the underlying weekly-pay duty, and the appellate split over whether a private right of action exists at all — Vega v. CM & Associates says yes, Grant v. Global Aircraft Dispatch says no — remains unresolved at the Court of Appeals. The compliance answer is unchanged: pay housekeeping weekly, or, for operators with 1,000+ New York employees, obtain NYSDOL authorization for semi-monthly pay. See housekeeper pay.

Banquet service charges after World Yacht#

Labor Law 196-d bars employers and their agents from retaining any "charge purported to be a gratuity," and Samiento v. World Yacht (2008) held that mandatory banquet charges can qualify. Part 146 then stacks the deck: under 146-2.18 and 146-2.19, a banquet or event service charge is presumed to be a gratuity unless the employer clearly discloses — in writing, on both the contract and the bill — that it is an administrative charge that will not be distributed to staff. Splitting a 22% charge into a distributed share and a house share is lawful only with that disclosure discipline, and the distributed share then enters the regular rate for overtime. The exposure sits squarely in hotel banquet and catering operations; see service charges and the banquets and events checklist.

The NYC market: union scale and the Safe Hotels Act#

Legal floors are not the market in New York City. The Hotel & Gaming Trades Council's 2024 master contract — covering roughly 250 hotels — puts housekeeper rates on a trajectory from about $40 an hour toward $61+ by 2034, which means non-union operators recruit against CBA scale rather than the $17.00 minimum, and underwriting that assumes wage-order floors will misprice labor badly. The city also layers on the Safe Hotels Act (Local Law 104 of 2024): hotel licensing, panic buttons, and a direct-employment requirement for core staff that unwinds subcontracted housekeeping models — with real wage consequences, because moving agency housekeepers onto property payroll brings §191 weekly pay and the full Part 146 apparatus with them. For the structural questions that raises, see joint employer.

Official sources#

• NYSDOL — minimum wage
• NYSDOL — minimum wage for tipped workers
• Hospitality Industry Wage Order (Part 146)
• NYSDOL minimum wage for tipped workers (2026 FSW $11.35/$5.65 downstate, $10.70/$5.30 ROS; SE $14.15/$2.85; thresholds $3.65/$9.55) (accessed 2026-06-12)
• NY.gov: New York State's minimum wage ($17.00/$16.00 for 2026; CPI indexing from 2027) (accessed 2026-06-12)
• Proskauer Law and the Workplace: NYS minimum wage and exempt salary updates for 2026 ($1,275.00 / $1,199.10) (accessed 2026-06-12)
• Jackson Lewis: modified wage-order obligations with 2026 increases (uniform maintenance $21.10/$19.85; meal credits) (accessed 2026-06-12)

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