Tipped Minimum Wage in SeaTac (2026)

Key numbers at a glance

How SeaTac tipped pay works

SeaTac's rate comes from its Employment Standards Ordinance — the voter-approved measure in effect since January 1, 2014 — not from a citywide minimum wage. It covers hospitality and transportation industry employers in the city, and the Washington State Supreme Court ruled the ordinance enforceable inside the airport itself, per the city's Employment Standards page. For 2026 the rate is $20.74 an hour, adjusted annually for the cost of living, per the state L&I local rates list. Hotels near the terminal, airport concessions, parking operations, rental car companies and shuttle services are the heart of the covered universe.

Because Washington allows no tip credit anywhere in the state, a covered employer must pay the whole $20.74 an hour in cash. Tips never count toward it — they are addition, not substitution — so there is no top-up math to police. A 40-hour week makes it concrete: the employer owes 40 × $20.74 = $829.60 in wages whether the terminal is packed or fogged in. Keep $550 in tips across that week and you take home $1,379.60 — an effective $34.49 an hour. The server paycheck calculator turns your own hours and kept tips into that number in seconds.

What makes SeaTac different from Seattle or Tukwila is scope, not size: the ordinance is industry-based rather than a universal city floor. A covered airport hotel server earns $20.74; a worker at a non-covered SeaTac business falls back to Washington's statewide $17.13. Coverage is the first question, the rate is the second. The full picture:

SeaTac vs. Washington vs. the federal rule

The pattern is Washington's, amplified: guaranteed cash first, tips second. A covered SeaTac worker's 30-hour floor is $622.20 in wages alone — nearly triple the $217.50 weekly floor a federal-system server in a $2.13 state fights for.

What SeaTac servers should watch

Coverage before rate. The $20.74 belongs to hospitality and transportation employment in SeaTac; everything else in the city runs on the state's $17.13. Airport-adjacent addresses can be deceiving — some parcels sit inside neighboring Tukwila or unincorporated King County. Ask which standard your employer pays under, and verify with the city's Employment Standards Ordinance page if the answer is fuzzy.

Overtime at $31.11. Covered overtime is 1.5 × $20.74 = $31.11 an hour in cash, plus tips. Airport schedules run long — a delayed-departure double should be priced correctly before you pick it up. Run it through the overtime calculator first.

Tips stay yours. No Washington employer may take any share of your tips or count them toward the wage, and tip pools are for employees only — never managers or supervisors. At an airport concession staffed by contractors, make sure the entity signing your check is the entity that owes you $20.74.

Neighbor math. The 2026 local rates sit within a few dollars of each other: Seattle $21.30, Tukwila $21.65 for covered employers, Renton $20.57 to $21.57 by employer size, and SeaTac $20.74 — all per the L&I local rates list. A shift can cross city lines at this airport; hours are owed at the rate of the city where they were worked. See the city minimum wage hub for side-by-side pages.

Your real number. A $20.74 base plus $22 an hour in tips is a $42.74-an-hour job. Compute effective hourly — wages plus kept tips, divided by hours — before comparing offers inside or outside the airport. The statewide no-tip-credit background is in our Washington state breakdown.