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$1,471/week
The average Florida wage is $1,471 per week, which annualises to roughly $76,492 per year (BLS QCEW, Q4 2025).
Florida’s average salary is $76,492 (BLS Q4 2025). See all 67 county wages, the 30 Sept $15 minimum, and employer costs.
The salary, wage-growth and employer-cost figures that matter when hiring employees in Florida.
The average Florida wage is $1,471 per week, which annualises to roughly $76,492 per year (BLS QCEW, Q4 2025).
Florida sits about 6.2 percent below the US average of $1,569 per week, or $81,588 per year.
Florida wages grew 4.8 percent over the year against a national 4.2 percent, so the state is closing the gap, not falling behind.
Only two Florida counties beat the national average: Palm Beach ($1,710) and Miami-Dade ($1,659).
Florida's state minimum wage rises from $14.00 to $15.00 per hour on 30 September 2026, the final step of Amendment 2.
Employer statutory cost is unusually light at about 8 percent on top of salary, because Florida has no state income tax and caps reemployment tax at the first $7,000 of pay.
The average salary in Florida is about $76,492 per year, based on an average weekly wage of $1,471 reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for the fourth quarter of 2025. That figure covers roughly 10.01 million workers across 886,151 establishments. Florida ranks 17th of the 50 states on wage level and 12th on wage growth. The state median household income is a separate measure at $77,700, which ranks Florida 26th nationally per U.S. Census Bureau data. Pay inside the state varies far more than the headline suggests: county averages run from $1,710 a week in Palm Beach down to $891 in Holmes, a spread of 1.9 times.
Those two sentences answer the search. The rest of this page answers the question people actually have behind it, which is whether a specific number is good for a specific job, in a specific county, at a specific point in the year. Florida is one of the few states where the calendar matters, because the wage floor moves on 30 September 2026 rather than on 1 January.
Because three different agencies measure three different things, and most salary pages mix them. The gap between the numbers is not error, it is definition. Use the one that matches your question.
| Measure | Florida 2026 figure | What it counts | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average weekly wage (QCEW) | $1,471 per week / $76,492 per year | Total payroll divided by covered jobs, including bonuses and commissions | Total labour cost planning |
| Mean hourly wage (OEWS) | $28.87 to $32.30 depending on metro | Survey of employers by occupation, excludes self-employed | Benchmarking one role |
| Median household income | $77,700 per year | All income for everyone in a home, including pensions and investments | Cost of living and affordability |
| Median earnings, full-time worker | About $53,766 per year | One full-time worker at the midpoint | What a typical worker actually earns |
The important gap is between the average and the median. Florida’s average of $76,492 is pulled upward by high earners in finance, medicine and law concentrated in three South Florida counties. The median full-time worker earns closer to $53,766. If you are benchmarking an offer, the median is the more honest anchor. If you are budgeting a payroll, the average is the one that reconciles to your books. The same distinction applies when you compare against the average salary in the US, the average salary in California or the average salary in Texas.
Florida pays about 6.2 percent below the national average and ranks 17th of 50 states. That places it above every other state in the Southeast except none, and below the large coastal economies. Against its direct competitors for corporate relocation, Florida sits behind Texas by a narrow margin and well behind California and New York.
| State | Avg weekly wage, Q4 2025 | Annualised | Rank by level | Growth over year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| District of Columbia | $2,587 | $134,524 | 1 | 4.1% |
| Massachusetts | $1,980 | $102,960 | 2 | 4.9% |
| New York | $1,975 | $102,700 | 3 | 5.4% |
| California | $1,954 | $101,608 | 4 | 4.6% |
| United States | $1,569 | $81,588 | n/a | 4.2% |
| Texas | $1,549 | $80,548 | 13 | 4.2% |
| Florida | $1,471 | $76,492 | 17 | 4.8% |
| Georgia | $1,440 | $74,880 | 21 | 3.5% |
| Alabama | $1,301 | $67,652 | 36 | 3.7% |
| Mississippi | $1,075 | $55,900 | 51 | 5.1% |
It is closing. Florida wages rose 4.8 percent over the year to Q4 2025 while the national figure was 4.2 percent, which puts Florida 12th of 50 states on growth despite ranking 17th on level. This is the single most useful fact on this page for anyone setting a multi-year salary budget, and it is the one most Florida salary articles omit because they report a level and stop.
The growth is not evenly spread. Sixteen of the 25 large Florida counties with published data beat the national growth rate. Brevard and Palm Beach both gained 6.7 percent. Leon gained 6.4 percent and Duval 5.9 percent. At the other end, Lake County wages fell 0.6 percent and Collier managed only 2.0 percent. A company budgeting a flat statewide increase will overpay in some counties and lose candidates in others.
What this means for your 2027 budget •If you benchmarked Florida salaries in early 2025 and have not revisited them, your bands are roughly 5 percent stale. •Counties on the Space Coast and in the Palm Beaches are repricing faster than Tampa Bay and Southwest Florida. •A single statewide increase percentage is the wrong instrument. Set county tiers instead, using the table below. •Because the wage floor moves on 30 September, budget the increase into Q4 rather than into the following January. |
Palm Beach County pays the most at $1,710 per week, or about $88,920 a year, and Holmes County pays the least at $891 per week, or about $46,332. Only Palm Beach and Miami-Dade exceed the national average of $1,569. The full 67-county picture is the most useful dataset on Florida pay that exists, and almost nobody publishes it in a salary guide.
Two. Palm Beach at $1,710 and Miami-Dade at $1,659. Hillsborough comes close at $1,559 but falls just under. Here are the twenty highest-paying counties in the state.
| # | County | Main metro | Avg weekly wage | Annualised |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Palm Beach | Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach | $1,710 | $88,920 |
| 2 | Miami-Dade | Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach | $1,659 | $86,268 |
| 3 | Hillsborough | Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater | $1,559 | $81,068 |
| 4 | Broward | Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach | $1,532 | $79,664 |
| 5 | Duval | Jacksonville | $1,503 | $78,156 |
| 6 | Pinellas | Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater | $1,494 | $77,688 |
| 7 | Orange | Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford | $1,435 | $74,620 |
| 8 | Collier | Naples-Marco Island | $1,430 | $74,360 |
| 9 | Brevard | Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville | $1,416 | $73,632 |
| 10 | Sarasota | North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota | $1,387 | $72,124 |
| 11 | Alachua | Gainesville | $1,375 | $71,500 |
| 12 | Seminole | Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford | $1,366 | $71,032 |
| 13 | Leon | Tallahassee | $1,338 | $69,576 |
| 14 | Manatee | North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota | $1,293 | $67,236 |
| 15 | Lee | Cape Coral-Fort Myers | $1,289 | $67,028 |
| 16 | Hendry | South Florida nonmetro | $1,284 | $66,768 |
| 17 | Martin | Port St. Lucie | $1,284 | $66,768 |
| 18 | Indian River | Sebastian-Vero Beach | $1,281 | $66,612 |
| 19 | St. Johns | Jacksonville | $1,269 | $65,988 |
| 20 | Escambia | Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent | $1,257 | $65,364 |
The ten lowest-paying counties are all rural, mostly in the Panhandle and the Big Bend, and every one of them pays under $1,000 a week. This matters because it is where the new $15 wage floor bites hardest.
| County | Avg weekly wage | Annualised | Share of state average |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holmes | $891 | $46,332 | 61% |
| Calhoun | $899 | $46,748 | 61% |
| Madison | $927 | $48,204 | 63% |
| Franklin | $934 | $48,568 | 64% |
| Lafayette | $943 | $49,036 | 64% |
| Washington | $948 | $49,296 | 64% |
| Dixie | $950 | $49,400 | 65% |
| Levy | $956 | $49,712 | 65% |
| Baker | $960 | $49,920 | 65% |
| Suwannee | $978 | $50,856 | 66% |
Miami leads at a mean hourly wage of $32.30, followed by Tampa at $31.96, Jacksonville at $31.59, Orlando at $29.76 and Cape Coral at $28.87. Every Florida metro sits below the national mean of $33.54, but the spread between the top and bottom Florida metro is only $3.43 an hour, which is much narrower than the county-level spread.
| Metropolitan area | Mean hourly wage | Gap to US mean | Highest-paying group | Lowest-paying group |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach | $32.30 | -3.7% |
Management $66.15 |
Building and grounds $18.23 |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater | $31.96 | -4.7% | Management | Food preparation |
| Jacksonville | $31.59 | -5.8% | Management | Food preparation |
| Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford | $29.76 | -11.3% |
Management $62.99 |
Personal care $17.78 |
| Cape Coral-Fort Myers | $28.87 | -13.9% |
Management $59.58 |
Food preparation $18.40 |
| United States | $33.54 | baseline | Management | Food preparation |
Management, legal and computer roles top the table in every Florida metro, and the premium over the local average is enormous. In Orlando, a management role averages $62.99 an hour against a metro-wide $29.76, which is 2.1 times the local mean. Legal work pays $59.28 an hour in Miami and computer and mathematical occupations pay $50.95 in Orlando.
The practical read for an employer is that Florida’s discount to the national average is concentrated in low-wage service occupations, not in professional ones. A Miami legal or management hire costs close to what the same hire costs elsewhere. A Miami hospitality or facilities hire costs meaningfully less. If your Florida headcount is weighted toward professional roles, do not assume you will bank the statewide 6.2 percent discount. Model it role by role using the Florida OEWS state estimates and cross-check against your own fully loaded employee cost model.
Food preparation, personal care, and building and grounds cleaning cluster tightly between $17.78 and $18.94 an hour across every Florida metro measured. Orlando personal care at $17.78 is the lowest published group figure in the state. These three groups also carry the largest employment shares in the tourism metros, where food preparation alone accounts for 11.5 percent of Orlando jobs and 9.9 percent of Miami jobs.
The compression story hiding in these numbers • Orlando’s lowest-paying occupation group averages $17.78 an hour today. • The statutory wage floor becomes $15.00 an hour on 30 September 2026. • That leaves $2.78 of headroom between the legal minimum and the average pay of an entire occupation group. • In a metro where that group is 11.5 percent of all employment, a mandated floor increase does not stay at the floor. It pushes the whole band up, because a business cannot pay a three-year employee the same as a new hire. |
Every non-exempt Florida employee must be paid at least $15.00 per hour from 30 September 2026, up from $14.00. The tipped cash wage rises from $10.98 to $11.98, with the $3.02 tip credit unchanged. This is the final scheduled step of Amendment 2, the constitutional amendment Florida voters approved in November 2020. After this increase, adjustments move to inflation indexing rather than fixed dollar steps.
There is no grace period and the date is not 1 January. Paying $14.99 an hour on 1 October 2026 is a violation. Because most payroll teams are calibrated to January minimum wage changes, this is the single most commonly missed compliance date in the state.
| Effective date | Standard minimum | Tipped cash wage | Annualised at 2,080 hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 September 2024 | $13.00 | $9.98 | $27,040 |
| 30 September 2025 | $14.00 | $10.98 | $29,120 |
| 30 September 2026 | $15.00 | $11.98 | $31,200 |
| 1 January 2028 onward | Indexed to CPI-W | Indexed, $3.02 credit retained | Varies |
The rural Panhandle counties, by a wide margin. Peorient calculated a Wage Floor Pressure Index for every county: the annualised minimum wage of $31,200 expressed as a percentage of that county’s average annual wage. In Holmes and Calhoun the new floor equals 67 percent of the county average wage. In Palm Beach it equals 35 percent. The same law lands twice as heavily in one part of the state as in another.
| County | Avg annual wage | $15 floor as share of average | Pressure level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holmes | $46,332 | 67% | Severe |
| Calhoun | $46,748 | 67% | Severe |
| Highlands | $52,208 | 60% | High |
| Citrus | $54,080 | 58% | High |
| Lake | $56,108 | 56% | High |
| Marion | $57,460 | 54% | High |
| Osceola | $58,500 | 53% | Elevated |
| Florida statewide | $76,492 | 41% | Moderate |
| Orange | $74,620 | 42% | Moderate |
| United States | $81,588 | 38% | Reference |
| Miami-Dade | $86,268 | 36% | Low |
| Palm Beach | $88,920 | 35% | Low |
A restaurant group operating in both Palm Beach and Marion County is running two different businesses from a labour cost perspective, even though the statute is identical. In Marion, the floor increase reprices a much larger share of the workforce and leaves far less room for internal pay differentiation.
Tipped staff must receive a cash wage of at least $11.98 per hour from 30 September 2026, and cash wage plus tips must reach $15.00 for every workweek. If tips fall short in any week, the employer covers the difference. Salaried exempt employees are governed by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act salary and duties tests, not by the state minimum, but a job title alone never creates an exemption. Misclassifying a worker as exempt, or as a contractor, is the most expensive mistake in this area, and the tests are laid out in our guide to employee versus contractor classification.
Partly. Florida has no state income tax and no local income tax, which is worth roughly $3,100 to $4,100 a year on an average salary compared with California, and about $3,600 compared with New York. But Florida also has the most expensive homeowners insurance in the United States, and for a homeowner that single line item can consume most or all of the tax saving.
On the Florida average of $76,492, a single filer keeps approximately $3,100 more than in California on state income tax alone, rising to about $4,100 once California State Disability Insurance is included, and approximately $3,600 more than in New York. Every worker in every state still pays federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, so this is a state-level difference only.
| State | State income tax on $76,492 | Other mandatory employee deductions | Kept versus Florida |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florida | $0 | None | baseline |
| Texas | $0 | None | $0 |
| California | About $3,141 | SDI about $918 | About $4,059 less |
| New York | About $3,602 | PFL and DBL premiums apply | About $3,602 less, plus premiums |
Homeowners insurance. Florida is the most expensive state in the country for home insurance, and published estimates vary widely by methodology, which is itself worth knowing before you rely on any single figure.
At $300,000 of dwelling coverage, Insurance.com puts the Florida average at $8,471 a year against a national $2,872. Other 2026 analyses using different coverage profiles land between roughly $4,200 and $5,700. Take even the conservative end of that range and the Florida premium over the national average is around $1,800 to $2,800 a year. Take the high end and it is more than $5,500. On an average Florida salary, the income tax saving of roughly $3,100 to $4,100 is therefore either partly or entirely absorbed by one insurance line, before flood cover is added.
About $82,575 a year for a $76,492 salary, which is a statutory load of roughly 8 percent. Florida is one of the cheapest states in the country to employ someone from a payroll tax perspective, because there is no state income tax to administer, no state disability insurance, no state paid family leave premium, and reemployment tax applies only to the first $7,000 of each employee’s annual pay.
Here is the arithmetic, line by line. These are statutory employer costs only and exclude benefits, workers compensation, equipment and recruitment.
| Cost line | Rate | Applied to | Annual employer cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross salary | n/a | n/a | $76,492 |
| Social Security and Medicare (FICA) | 7.65% | Full salary, SS capped | $5,852 |
| Federal unemployment (FUTA) | 0.6% after credit | First $7,000 | $42 |
| Florida reemployment tax, new employer | 2.7% | First $7,000 | $189 |
| Total, new employer | n/a | n/a | $82,575 |
| Total, best experience rating (0.10%) | n/a | n/a | $82,393 |
| Total, worst experience rating (5.4%) | n/a | n/a | $82,764 |
Notice how small the range is. The difference between Florida’s best and worst reemployment tax rating is $371 per employee per year, because the $7,000 wage base caps the exposure. The Florida Department of Revenue sets the new employer rate at 2.7 percent for the first ten quarters, then assigns an experience rating between 0.10 percent and 5.4 percent. Reemployment tax is employer-paid only and cannot be deducted from wages. For a 25-person Florida team, the entire annual reemployment tax bill ranges from $175 at the best rating to $9,450 at the worst.
Favourably, and the gap is administrative as much as financial. A Florida employer manages federal income tax withholding, FICA, FUTA and one state tax. A New York employer adds state income tax, city income tax for some employees, mandatory disability benefits law cover, paid family leave, and a state unemployment wage base more than double Florida’s. A California employer adds state income tax and State Disability Insurance.
For a company entering the US market, that administrative difference is the reason Florida shows up so often on shortlists alongside Texas. If you are running the comparison properly, model the total cost rather than the salary, and read our breakdown of how to calculate the true cost of an employee alongside the global payroll services cost guide. Companies weighing whether to run this in-house or outsource it should also read payroll outsourcing: the definitive guide and what global payroll actually covers.
Anchor on county, not state. Setting one Florida band produces offers that are simultaneously uncompetitive in Palm Beach and overpriced in Marion. The five steps below turn the data on this page into a band you can defend to a candidate and to a finance team.
One caution on the underlying data. The May 2025 OEWS survey panel was delayed by the federal appropriations lapse between 1 October and 12 November 2025. BLS reports that the response rate stayed within the normal range and no methodology changes were needed, but it is worth knowing that this release ran on an extended timeline.
Through an Employer of Record, which legally employs the worker in Florida on your behalf while you direct the day-to-day work. The EOR holds the Florida reemployment tax account, runs payroll, files RT-6 returns quarterly, administers benefits and carries the compliance risk. You keep the working relationship and pay a per-employee monthly fee.
This route exists because incorporating in Florida, registering with the Department of Revenue, opening a reemployment tax account and building US payroll infrastructure is a multi-month project that rarely pays back for fewer than about fifteen employees. Our full explanation of the model is in what is an Employer of Record, with Florida-relevant detail in the Employer of Record USA guide.
| Route | Setup time | Best when | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employer of Record | 1 to 2 weeks | Fewer than 15 US staff, or testing the market | Per-employee fee at scale |
| PEO co-employment | 2 to 4 weeks | You already have a US entity | You keep employer-of-record liability |
| Own US Entity | 2 to 4 months | Large or permanent US presence | Fixed cost and admin overhead |
| Independent contractor | Days | Genuinely project-based work | Misclassification penalties |
If you are comparing providers, start with how to choose an Employer of Record and the EOR vetting checklist, then look at the market itself through our reviews of Deel, Papaya Global, Rivermate and the head-to-head Deel versus Remote comparison. Companies at a specific stage may prefer our shortlists for startups, SaaS companies and remote-first companies. If you are unsure whether you need an EOR at all, the signs your business needs a PEO partnership and EOR versus PEO are the right places to start, and EOR versus staffing agency clears up the most common confusion.
Further reading on the surrounding operational stack: EOR payroll mechanics, the complete guide to global payroll, global HR compliance with an EOR, global workforce management, the complete guide to global hiring, international PEO services, EOR service providers, HRIS for small companies, PEO versus HRIS and Gusto versus ADP.
A good salary in Florida starts around $76,492, the state average, and is genuinely comfortable above about $95,000 for a single person in a metro county. In Holmes or Calhoun County, $55,000 sits well above the local average of roughly $46,500. In Palm Beach, the same $55,000 is 38 percent below the county average of $88,920. Location inside Florida changes the answer more than almost any other variable.
Yes in most of the state, and marginally so in South Florida. At $70,000 you are above the county average in 47 of Florida’s 67 counties, including Orange, Lee, Volusia, Polk and Marion. You are below average in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Broward, Duval and Pinellas. With no state income tax, $70,000 in Florida gives roughly the same take-home as about $74,000 in California, before housing and insurance costs are considered.
Between $28.87 and $32.30 depending on the metro, against a national mean of $33.54. Miami is highest at $32.30 and Cape Coral-Fort Myers is lowest among published metros at $28.87. The statutory floor is $14.00 until 29 September 2026 and $15.00 from 30 September 2026.
West Palm Beach and the wider Palm Beach County area, where the average weekly wage of $1,710 is the only county figure in the state that exceeds the national average by a clear margin. Miami-Dade follows at $1,659. On a metro basis rather than a county basis, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach leads on mean hourly wage at $32.30.
No. Florida levies no personal state income tax and Florida law does not permit counties or municipalities to impose a local income tax. Employers still handle federal income tax withholding, Social Security, Medicare, federal unemployment tax and Florida reemployment tax. C-corporations pay Florida corporate income tax at 5.5 percent.
On 30 September 2026 it rises from $14.00 to $15.00 per hour, and the tipped cash wage rises from $10.98 to $11.98. That is the final scheduled step under Amendment 2. From 1 January 2028, annual adjustments are indexed to the CPI-W rather than set at fixed dollar amounts. There is no grace period and the date is not aligned with the calendar year, which is why it is so frequently missed.
Faster. Florida wages grew 4.8 percent over the year to the fourth quarter of 2025 against a national 4.2 percent, ranking Florida 12th of 50 states on growth. Sixteen of the 25 large Florida counties with published data beat the national growth rate, led by Brevard and Palm Beach at 6.7 percent each. Lake County was the only large county to record a decline, at 0.6 percent.
Roughly 8 percent above salary in statutory costs, which is about $82,575 for a $76,492 hire. That covers FICA at 7.65 percent, FUTA at $42 per employee, and Florida reemployment tax between $7 and $378 per employee depending on your experience rating. Benefits, workers compensation and recruitment sit on top. Our employee cost calculation guide walks through the full model.
Every figure on this page comes from a primary federal or state source, published between May and June 2026. Peorient calculations are labelled as such and the arithmetic is shown so you can reproduce it.
Related Peorient benchmarks: average salary in the US, average salary in California, average salary in Texas, minimum wage by country, how average salaries compare across global income levels, gig economy statistics, benefits and drawbacks of the gig economy and 13 employee engagement ideas.
Questions about hiring in Florida? Talk to the Peorient team or read more about how we work.
Written by
Senior US Employment and HR Tech Analyst · 12+ years experience
Sarah leads US employment and HR technology coverage for Peorient. Former in-house HR Director at a 400-person fintech across 22 states and senior HR-tech analyst at G2 Crowd, where she built the review methodology for the payroll and HRIS categories. SHRM-SCP, SPHR, CPP. MILR, Cornell ILR.
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