Colorado Minimum Wage Guide for 2025

Colorado Minimum Wage - Historical Rates Table

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Local Colorado Minimum Wage

Colorado has varying minimum wage requirements depending on the locality. Effective 2019, a Colorado statute allowed local governments to set their own minimum wage requirements. Here are all the minimum wage rates for localities in Colorado:

Denver Minimum Wage (County and City)

Both Denver City and Denver County share a unique minimum wage from what the state requires. Denver also uses the Consumer Price Index to calculate the minimum wage each year.

The minimum wage for Denver City and Denver County is $18.81 per hour. For tipped employees, the minimum wage is $15.79 per hour, with the maximum tip credit an employer can claim being $3.02.

City of Edgewater Minimum Wage

Effective July 2023, the City of Edgewater passed an ordinance that allowed it to have its own local minimum wage. A minimum wage schedule was created and approved five years after starting from 2024 to 2028. Minimum wage schedules are to be determined by the city council for future years.

The current minimum wage for the City of Edgewater is $16.52 per hour. For tipped employees, the minimum wage is $13.50 per hour with a maximum tip credit of $3.02.

Boulder County Minimum Wage

The Boulder County Commissioners passed the local minimum wage ordinance in 2023 in an effort to counter rising costs of living in unincorporated areas of Boulder County.

The local minimum wage for Boulder County is $16.57 per hour. For tipped employees, the minimum wage is $13.55 per hour with a maximum tip credit of $3.02.

Unique to Boulder County, employers must ensure their business resides in an unincorporated town or community to qualify for the county's local minimum wage. Employers can research if the business is within an unincorporated area by using the Boulder County Assessor's Office Property Search Tool.

Incorporated towns of Boulder County that do not apply for the local minimum wage include:

• City of Boulder
• Erie
• Jamestown
• Lafayette
• Longmont
• Louisville
• Lyons
• Nederland
• Superior
• Ward

Employees performing or expected to perform up to four hours or more of work in an unincorporated area in Boulder County qualify for the local minimum wage.

City of Boulder Minimum Wage

On January 1, 2025, Boulder City enacted its own minimum wage increase separate from Colorado state and Boulder County in accordance with Boulder City Council's adoption of Ordinance 8664. The ordinance also establishes a minimum wage schedule that applies to 2026 and 2027.

The local minimum wage for Boulder City is $15.57 per hour. For tipped employees, the minimum wage is $12.55 per hour with a maximum tip credit of $3.02.

The scheduled minimum wage for 2026 is $16.82 per hour. For tipped employees, the minimum wage is $13.80 per hour.

The scheduled minimum wage for 2027 is $18.17 per hour. For tipped employees, the minimum wage is $15.50 per hour.

Colorado Special Minimum Wage

There are various exemptions detailed in the Colorado Overtime and Minimum Pay Standards Order (COMPS), however, the primary exemption includes any person exempt under FLSA classification.

Additional exceptions may apply to the following:

• Tipped employees
• Agricultural workers
• Workers with disabilities
• Certain drivers and driver's helpers
• Certain seasonal workers

Colorado Tipped Employees

“Tipped employees” are classified as someone who regularly makes over $30 a month in tips. Like other employees, “tipped employees” have the right to make a minimum wage of $14.81 per hour. However, an employer only has to pay their employees $3.02 per hour in their paycheck, as long as the employee makes a minimum of $11.79 per hour in tips, making the total pay per hour $14.81.

Employers may take a tip credit against an employee's wages for the amount they have earned in tips. To make up the difference in pay, if an employee makes less than $11.79 per hour in tips in a given work week, the employer must pay the employee’s earnings equal to $14.81 per hour for the work week.

Overtime Requirements

Under the COMPS Order, tipped employees working over 40 hours per week or 12 hours per day / shift must be paid one-half times their regular rate of pay in overtime.

Colorado Agricultural Employees

Colorado employers must pay all agricultural employees at least the state minimum wage rate, which is $14.81 per hour for 2025. For livestock range workers, employers can pay a weekly salary of $606.56 instead.

Overtime Requirements

Agricultural employees, whether 40 hours weekly or 12 hours daily, must be paid one-half times their regular rate of pay in overtime. However, most agricultural work is exempt from the standard overtime pay.

Effective January 1st, 2025, weekly overtime must be paid to these different types of agricultural employees following these hour thresholds:

* = Employers with at least twice as many employees as small employers in an up to 22-week peak season
** = Employers with fewer than four employees on average in the prior three calendar years AND have an average adjusted gross annual income under $1 million for three prior tax years

Regarding daily overtime, employees must be given the following:

• After 12 hours per day, an employee is given a half-hour paid break instead of the usual shorter third rest period
  • This can be given to the employee on the next workday if the employer had not planned for the employee to work 12 hours
• After 15 hours per day, an extra hour's pay of at least Colorado's minimum wage

Agricultural employees exempt from overtime pay include:

• Family owners of agricultural employers and certain members of their family
• Decision-making livestock managers who work for a livestock employer, and who are paid the salary for exempt managers
• Range workers “during periods when they are principally engaged in the range 23 production of livestock … on the open range[,]"
  • To be exempt, the range worker must be provided, with no cost or deduction, with housing, food, transportation, and equipment required by H-2A visa regulations

Colorado Workers with Disabilities

Effective July 1st, 2023, Colorado eliminated sub-minimum wage practices. Employees with disabilities must be paid at least the state or locality's minimum wage amount. Colorado DOES NOT accept a business's federal sub-minimum wage certificate that allows the business to pay a lower minimum wage to disabled employees.

Colorado Drivers and Driver Helpers

Driver employees subject to the Federal Motor Carrier Act (MCA) are exempt from overtime, meal breaks, and rest breaks. This includes employees that are:

• Working on MCA-covered non-passenger vehicles or MCA-covered passenger vehicles qualifying as a "commercial motor vehicle" requiring a commercial driver's license (CDL)
  • This does not include any work on vehicles that transport workers between manual work jobs and do not require a CDL (e.g., landscaping, construction, janitorial, or other manual labor)
• Paid compensation equal to at least 50 hours of Colorado minimum wage with overtime ($658.42 per week), regardless of whether pay is hourly, salaried, piece rate, or on another basis

Colorado Seasonal Workers

Field staff of seasonal camps or outdoor education programs may require special minimum wage if the employee:

• Provides supervision or education of minors or education of adults
• Is required to reside on-premises or in the field
• Is provided adequate lodging and all meals free of charge without deduction from wages

These employees must be paid either the applicable Colorado minimum wage for all hours worked OR a salary equal to at least 42 hours per week at the state's base minimum wage rate, with $200 reduced per week for facilities provided (can be 15% of hourly wage for unemancipated minor employees).

Seasonal employers generally refer to employers that do not operate for more than seven months in a year.

Seasonal workers for non-profit employers go by the following minimum weekly salaries:

Additional Colorado COMPS Order Exceptions

Employees exempt from the COMPS Order closely resemble the FLSA employee classifications, with additional exceptions. These include the following:

• Executives or supervisors
• Administrative employees
• Professional employees
  
  • Learned professionals
  • Creative professionals
• Some doctors, lawyers, and teachers

The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment website provides detailed explanations for these exceptions in Interpretive Notices and Formal Opinions (INFO) #1A.

Youth Minimum Wage in Colorado

Employers are allowed to pay minor employees at least 85% of the state's minimum wage. Any local minimum wage that is above the state's base minimum wage rate must be paid.

Employers doing business in Denver County or the City of Denver can pay minor employees 85% of the locality's minimum wage only if the minor employee is unemancipated and performs work under a city-verified youth employment program.

Overtime pay for minor employees is required after 40 hours per week or 12 hours per day / shift. Minor employees must be paid one-half times the regular rate of pay for overtime.

Colorado Meal and Rest Breaks

Colorado has unique meal and rest break requirements detailed under the COMPS Order.

Meal Break Requirements

For shifts over five consecutive hours, all employees are entitled to an uninterrupted meal break for at least 30 minutes (unless exempt by the COMPS Order). Meal periods must happen 1 hour after starting and 1 hour before ending a shift.

Employers may allow unpaid meal periods if employees are relieved of all duties, can leave the worksite, and are allowed to do personal activities.

If an uninterrupted meal break is impractical based on the type of work, the employer must let an employee eat while working and pay during that time. Whether meal breaks are considered impractical varies depending on the situation. Except in special cases, employers cannot declare all meal breaks for all employees impractical and never provide them, even if it pays for the time.

Rest Break Requirements

Employers must authorize and permit paid 10-minute rest periods for each 4 hours of work or a major fraction of that time (more than 2 hours).  An additional rest period is required for any period that rounds up to four hours.

Rest periods cannot include work, but employers don’t have to let employees leave the work site.

Employers may provide shorter rest periods of at least 5 minutes only if:

• An agreement is made between the employee and employer, voluntarily and without coercion, to allow two 5-minutes rest breaks every 4 hours 
• The work is under a collective bargaining agreement, or in Medicaid-funded home care, and the day’s total rest periods average 10 minutes per 4 hours

Pay is owed for rest periods not provided. A rest period requires 10 minutes of pay without work, so work performed during a rest period is additional work requiring additional pay. Employers MUST pay for the 10-minute rest period regardless of reason, as the rest break is paid time during an employee's normal hours. Employers cannot substitute rest breaks for extra pay. 

Any missed rest periods during overtime hours, hours past 40 in a week or 12 in a day, must be paid one-half times the employee's standard pay rate.

Colorado Minimum Wage Posting Requirements

For compliance with Colorado labor laws, employers must visibly display the Colorado minimum wage in a conspicuous location that all employees have access to in the workplace. An all-in-one Colorado Labor Law Poster will cover all the required state and federal labor law postings.

Note that each time the minimum wage is updated, the labor law poster must be replaced in the workplace. A labor law poster subscription service will automatically provide updated mandatory notices that need to be posted for employees as additional changes take place with state or local laws.

Penalties for Non-Compliance

If an employee has not received the lawful minimum wage, the employer must be notified by the employee of the claim. After giving the employer 15 days to resolve the issue of unpaid wages, an employee can bring a civil action lawsuit against the employer. The penalties for unpaid wages past 15 days depend on whether the violation was done willfully and when the employer pays after an order from the Division of Labor Standards and Statistics.

Colorado businesses may incur the following penalties for non-compliance: 

• Non-Payment of Wages - up to $50 fine each day starting when wages are due. The total fine can vary based on the amount of wages owed and whether or not the violation reflected good faith or bad faith by the employer.
• Failure to Respond to a Division Notice - up to $250 fine for notices requiring a response.
• Pay Statements Failed to be Produced - up to a $250 fine per employee per month.
• Non-Compliance with Division Orders or Investigations - up to $50 or more per day if an employer:
  • Fails to provide information to the Division
  • Refuses to furnish records such as books or payrolls to the Division
  • Hinders an investigation or inspection by the Division.
• Failure to Obey Orders or Duties from the Division - up to $100 or more per day.
  • Applies to the employer, employees, or any other person.

Final Thoughts on Colorado Minimum Wage

Businesses struggling to maintain minimum wage compliance or manage payroll may want to consider outsourcing payroll to a Colorado payroll company. Areas for additional knowledge and learning include the basics of payroll and what to know about modern payroll software.  

To learn more about how Employer Pass is helping countless businesses maintain minimum wage compliance, contact us today or use the find a provider tool.