Tipped Minimum Wage in Idaho (2026)

Key numbers at a glance

How Idaho tipped pay works

An Idaho employer pays a tipped server a cash wage of $3.35 per hour and may take a tip credit of up to $3.90 per hour against the $7.25 full minimum — your tips legally count toward covering the gap between the two numbers. The state minimum itself sits exactly at the federal $7.25, so Idaho's only real improvement over the federal system is the higher cash wage: $1.22 an hour more that must reach your check from the employer rather than from your guests. All figures on this page are per the U.S. Department of Labor table, July 2026 — the official tipped-wage table maintained by the DOL Wage and Hour Division.

The workweek, not the shift, is the unit of measurement. If your cash wage plus retained tips average at least $7.25 for every hour of the workweek, the employer owes nothing beyond $3.35 an hour. If they fall short, the top-up rule activates and the employer must pay the difference as make-up pay. Numbers make it concrete: over a 30-hour week the employer owes $100.50 in cash wages and the weekly floor is 30 × $7.25, or $217.50. Keep $90 in tips — $3.00 an hour — and cash plus tips averages $6.35, ninety cents short for every hour. That is $27.00 of make-up pay, and it belongs on the check automatically, not after you ask. Our server paycheck calculator runs this comparison for your own hours and tips.

Overtime follows the same principle as everywhere the tip credit applies: it is computed on the full minimum, never on the cash wage. The overtime cash rate equals the cash wage plus half the full minimum — $3.35 + $3.63, about $6.98 an hour — and your tips for those hours come on top. An employer multiplying the $3.35 by 1.5 and calling it a day is shorting every overtime hour. The overtime calculator shows the exact figure for your schedule.

Idaho vs. the federal $2.13 system

The table is the whole story in miniature: Idaho guarantees the same $7.25 destination but forces the employer to put a larger share of it in cash. The protections around it — the weekly top-up, the full-minimum overtime basis, the ban on managers keeping tips — are exactly the federal protections, no stronger.

Idaho, $7.25 and its neighbors

Geography matters more than job title in this region. Idaho's $7.25 minimum is shared with Utah and Wyoming, where the federal $2.13 cash wage still governs — but Idaho also borders three of the strongest tipped-wage states in the country: Washington, which pays the full $17.13 minimum in cash before tips; Oregon, at $15.55 standard with no tip credit; and Nevada, at $12.00 with no tip credit. A server in Coeur d'Alene and a server in Spokane Valley can work identical shifts and sit roughly ten dollars an hour apart in guaranteed pay. Montana, at $10.85 for most employers, widens the spread further. The tipped minimum wage by state table lays out every state in one view — worth checking before you take a job near a state line.

What Idaho servers should watch

The top-up, checked weekly. Slow weeks are exactly when the tip credit system is supposed to catch you, and exactly when employers forget to run the math. Track your hours and kept tips per workweek; if the average lands under $7.25, the difference is owed as make-up pay. A strong Saturday cannot subsidize a dead Tuesday within the same week, and one week cannot borrow against another.

Overtime at the correct rate. Overtime rides on the full minimum, not the $3.35 cash wage: about $6.98 an hour in cash plus tips. Paying "time and a half on $3.35" — roughly $5.03 — quietly underpays every overtime hour by nearly two dollars.

Tip pool membership. Pools are legal among employees only; managers and supervisors may never keep a share of your tips. That violation is the classic one that voids the employer's tip credit entirely, which would jump your cash wage to the full $7.25.

Your effective hourly. A $3.35 base with $24 an hour in tips is a $27-an-hour job in disguise. Compute total wages plus kept tips, divided by hours, before comparing this job to any other — the base wage is the floor, not the job.