Iowa Minimum Wage Law

Employers in Iowa must conform with these state rules regarding the minimum wage paid to employees.

The minimum wage rate in Iowa is $7.25 per hour.

Employers may pay employees who have not completed 90 days of employment a reduced hourly rate of at least $6.35 per hour for the first 90 days of employment.

Generally, all employees are covered, except:

• bona fide executive, administrative, and professional employees, including persons employed as academic administrative personnel or teachers
• certain persons employed by retail or service establishments with the majority of its annual dollar volume of sales made within the state
• persons employed by an amusement or recreational establishment, organized camp, or religious or non-profit educational conference center, if it does not operate for more than seven months a year or if its average receipts for any six months of the year were not more than one-third of its average receipts for the other six months of the year
• persons employed in the fishing and aquaculture industries
• any agricultural employee who is:
  • employed by an employer who did not, during any calendar quarter during the preceding year, use more than 500 man-days of agricultural labor
  • the parent, spouse, child or other member of his employer's immediate family
  • a hand harvest laborer, is paid on a piece-rate basis, commutes daily to the farm and has been employed in agriculture less than 13 weeks during the preceding calendar year
  • other than a hand harvest laborer, is under 16 years of age, is employed on the same farm as his parent and is paid at the same piece-rate as those over 16 years of age
  • principally engaged in the range production of livestock
• employees of a weekly, semiweekly, or daily newspaper with a circulation of less than 4,000
• switchboard operators employed by independently owned public telephone companies with no more than 750 stations
• seamen on non-American vessels
• domestics