A wage step you can see coming is a budget line; one you discover in payroll week is a crisis. This forecaster takes every property in a portfolio — state, city, room count, department staffing — and merges each verified scheduled increase that will reach it into one dated calendar: state minimum-wage steps, hotel-ordinance wages, healthcare payments, and tipped-wage phase-ins. It then models what each step adds to annual payroll against the average wages you actually pay. Inputs never leave your browser.
Forecast#
The merged rate calendar#
Exposure this forecast does not price#
Scheduled wage steps are only one cost vector. These flag the adjacent obligations a rate calendar leaves out — workload premiums, fair-workweek scheduling pay, and coverage thresholds the portfolio sits just under.
| Severity | Exposure | Note |
|---|
Budget impact, property by property#
Portfolio rollup:
Calendar-year budget#
Hold the line or compress? The cost of preserving wage differentials#
When the floor jumps, you can compress — raise only the workers below it, the legal minimum — or preserve, moving everyone up by the floor rise so a senior attendant keeps the gap over a new hire. The difference is the differential-preservation premium.
The math, step by step#
Where the schedule comes from#
Every date and dollar figure in the default view comes from the same verified dataset that powers the 50-state center and the hotel ordinance map: state minimum-wage files with their scheduled steps (DC's $18.40 on July 1, 2026; Michigan's $15.00 on January 1, 2027), hotel-ordinance schedules (Los Angeles' $25.00 on July 1, 2026, stepping to $30.00 by July 1, 2030; Long Beach's $26.50 / $28.00 / $29.50 ladder), healthcare-payment schedules, and tipped-wage phase-ins — every step sourced and dated against the enacting statute, ordinance, or agency bulletin. If a row carries no estimate badge, the number is already fixed in law; the same data feeds the sitewide compliance calendar.
Why CPI rows are estimates — and how they're labeled#
Many floors index to inflation after their last fixed step: most CPI states announce each January 1 (or July 1) figure only a few months ahead, Los Angeles' hotel rate indexes after its 2030 step, and Long Beach indexes after 2028. Those future numbers do not exist yet — no one can verify them, because no agency has published them. With the estimate toggle on, the tool compounds the last verified rate at your assumed CPI on each January 1 / July 1 anniversary, and every synthesized row wears an estimate chip — in the timeline, in the budget tables, and in the CSV's status column. Treat estimates as planning placeholders, never as compliance figures: the controlling rate on any given day is always the one the agency announced.
Reading a budget shock#
The budget table flags any date where the effective floor — controlling wage floor plus any per-hour healthcare payment — jumps $1.50/hour or more in a single step. Those are the dates that break budgets drafted from last year's actuals.
An 80-room Los Angeles hotel, July 1, 2026. The hotel-worker minimum steps from $22.50 to $25.00, and a $4.25/hour health benefit payment begins the same day — an effective increase of $6.75/hour at the floor. For one full-time housekeeper paid $22.50 today, that is 2,080 hours × ($2.50 wage lift + $4.25 healthcare) ≈ $14,040 per year. A 12-person housekeeping department absorbs roughly $168,000 annually from a single calendar date — and the healthcare payment rises again to $6.00/hour on July 1, 2027.
Tipped phase-ins, priced in dollars#
Tipped-wage schedules are written as a moving percentage of the minimum wage, which hides the dollar trajectory. The forecaster resolves the percentage against its own statutory base — a city schedule's minimum where one exists (Chicago), otherwise the state minimum — and never against a hotel-ordinance floor, which would double-count. Mark a department as tipped and enter its average cash wage, and the budget measures the shortfall to the tipped cash floor (tips ride on top to reach the full minimum):
- District of Columbia: the cash wage is frozen at $10.00 through June 30, 2026, then steps to 56% of the $18.40 minimum — $10.30 — on July 1, 2026, climbing every two years to a 75% cap in 2034.
- Michigan: the tipped percentage rises from 40% to 42% of the $15.00 minimum — $6.30 — on January 1, 2027, reaching a permanent 50% in 2031.
- Chicago: the May 2026 compromise froze the tipped wage at 76% of the city minimum — 76% × $17.05 = $12.96 — with no step on July 1, 2026 or 2027, then resuming to 84% (2028), 92% (2029), and full parity in 2030.
The percentages are fixed in law; the bases that several of them multiply are CPI-indexed, so the dollar figures for later years carry the estimate badge once the indexed base passes its last verified step.
Scenario bands and the cost of holding the line#
A single CPI assumption is a false precision. With the estimate toggle on, the tool also runs a low / base / high band — three inflation assumptions over the same verified steps — so the headline number comes with a range rather than a point. Every verified (non-estimated) row is identical across the three by construction; only the synthesized future rows fan out.
And once a floor moves, the real decision is not whether to comply but how. Compress raises only the workers the floor leaves underwater — the legal minimum, and the default the budget tables model. Preserve moves every wage up by the floor rise, so a senior housekeeper at $24 keeps her dollar over a new hire when the floor climbs from $22.50 to $25. The gap between the two — the differential-preservation premium — is often the larger of the two costs and the one that never shows up in a rate calendar. The forecaster prices both, per department, so the trade-off is a number rather than an argument.
How far the data sees#
- Los Angeles: hotel-worker steps are enacted through July 1, 2030 ($30.00), then the rate indexes to CPI.
- Long Beach: fixed steps through July 1, 2028 ($29.50), then CPI with a 2% annual floor from July 2029.
- District of Columbia: tipped-wage percentages are legislated through July 1, 2034 (capped at 75% of the minimum), while the minimum itself indexes after its 2026 step.
- Everywhere else: the horizon is whatever the enacting law fixed. Past it, the timeline goes quiet unless the CPI toggle is on — and then every row past the horizon is visibly an estimate.
Background: the minimum-wage landscape · the hotel ordinance map. To audit what a single workweek costs under the rules in force on one date, use the workweek compliance auditor. This tool is educational and illustrative — budget figures are models against the averages you enter, not payroll calculations, and estimates are not rates. See the disclaimer.