West Hollywood Minimum Wage 2026 and 2027

The city lists $20.94 per hour for non-hotel employees from January 1, 2027, up from $20.25, in effect until December 31, 2027. The city says the increase follows the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) for the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim area and shall be no less than 1.0% and no more than 4.0%. Hotel employees follow their own July 1 schedule.

The non-hotel rate increases each January 1 by the CPI-W for the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim area, no less than 1.0% and no more than 4.0%; the hotel rate follows the same index each July 1.

California law does not allow a tip credit: the California Department of Industrial Relations says an employer may not use an employee's tips as a credit toward its obligation to pay the minimum wage per hour. West Hollywood says the same in its FAQ: under California Labor Code 351, what an employee earns in tips also cannot count toward the minimum wage. Medical benefits and service charges cannot be used as a credit either.

The ordinance covers any employee who works at least two hours in a calendar week within West Hollywood, full-time, part-time or temporary, and employers based outside the city must comply for work done inside it. Large and small businesses (50 or more or 49 or fewer employees) have paid the same rate since July 2023.

A hotel worker is an employee whose primary place of employment is one or more West Hollywood hotels, whether employed by the hotel or by a business that contracts with it, including restaurant and food and beverage staff at a hotel and businesses operating on hotel property.

• The law does not apply to employees of government agencies and certain employees who do not qualify for minimum wage under California law, nor to employees under a collective bargaining agreement that expressly supersedes it. It contains limited exemptions for transitional employers.
• Learners as defined in California Labor Code Section 1192 are paid at least 85% of the West Hollywood minimum wage, rounded to the nearest nickel, during their first 160 hours of employment.
• The City Manager may grant a one-year waiver to a business that shows compliance would force it to file bankruptcy or shut down, reduce its workforce by more than 20%, or cut employees' total hours by more than 30%.