Seattle’s minimum wage will rise to $22.14 an hour on Jan. 1, 2027, an increase of 84 cents, or 3.9 percent, from the 2026 rate. The city says the figure would leave Seattle with one of the highest minimum wages in the country, if not the highest, assuming no other jurisdiction raises its own wage floor to match or exceed it.
At $22.14 an hour, a full-time worker would earn roughly $46,000 a year before taxes.
The wage has climbed steadily since 2025, when Seattle began requiring all employers in the city, including small businesses that had previously been allowed to pay less, to pay the same minimum wage. That rate is adjusted annually for inflation.
The change has coincided with financial strain for some local businesses. In the first half of 2025, about 450 Seattle restaurants closed, representing roughly 16 percent of the city’s total. Business districts near large employers such as Amazon and Microsoft saw a 7 percent drop in activity over the same period.
Restaurant owners have pointed to wage compression as a particular challenge, since pay increases for lower-wage positions can push up costs for other roles to preserve pay differences within a kitchen or dining room. In 2024, one Seattle restaurant owner described the dynamic this way: “If the servers are making $20 an hour, then I gotta pay the cooks $35.”
Some employers have responded by slowing hiring or turning to automation. One Seattle spa owner has said she froze hiring and began using artificial intelligence tools as the minimum wage rose to $22.14 an hour.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has said she worked a range of jobs before entering politics, including in a lab, a bakery, a law office and construction. “I worked a bunch of working-class jobs,” she has said, adding, “Psychologically, it really did something to me.”
Separately, the city faces a lawsuit from a former Human Services Department employee who alleges that mandatory racial-equity training led to years of harassment and discrimination against him. That case remains pending.
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