New Mexico Minimum Wage 2026: $12.00 Statewide, $15.40 in Santa Fe

New Mexico’s minimum wage is $12.00 an hour, unchanged since January 1, 2023. It is not indexed to inflation, and no increase is scheduled. Tipped employees can be paid a $3.00 cash wage if tips bring them to $12.00, and secondary school students working outside school hours can be paid $8.50. Local rates can be higher: the City of Santa Fe’s is $15.40 and rises to $17.50 on January 1, 2027. In Albuquerque, the state’s $12.00 applies because the city’s own 2026 rate is lower.

New Mexico at a glance

How the New Mexico minimum wage is set

The rate is fixed in the Minimum Wage Act, NMSA §50-4-22. Senate Bill 437, passed in 2019, raised it in steps: $9.00 in 2020, $10.50 in 2021, $11.50 in 2022 and $12.00 on January 1, 2023. That was the last scheduled step. The Act has no inflation adjustment, so the state rate changes only when the Legislature passes a new law.

Bills to add indexing have been introduced without passing. House Bill 522 in 2025, which would have tied the rate to the CPI from 2026, died in committee. The 2026 session was a 30-day budget session, and we found no minimum wage change enacted in it. The next regular 60-day session begins in January 2027, so any state increase would come from a bill passed there or later.

New Mexico tipped minimum wage

An employee who customarily and regularly receives more than $30 a month in tips can be paid a cash wage of $3.00 an hour, the rate in effect since January 1, 2023. The employer may count tips toward the minimum wage, but cash wage plus tips must reach at least $12.00 an hour. Tips belong to the employee, although tip pooling among wait staff is allowed.

Local rules can change the tipped rate. Albuquerque sets a $7.20 tipped wage for 2026, and Santa Fe allows a $3.00 base only if tips bring the employee to the city’s full rate.

Local minimum wages in New Mexico

Santa Fe’s figures come from the City of Santa Fe living wage page: after the one-time increase to $17.50 in January 2027, the rate adjusts each March 1 from 2028 using a blend of Western-region CPI and local fair market rent, with increases capped at 5%. Albuquerque’s come from its 2026 minimum wage notice, which puts the city rate at $11.85, or $10.85 where the employer spends at least $2,500 a year on healthcare or childcare benefits, and states that the state’s $12.00 supersedes both. Albuquerque must post the coming year’s rate by October 15.

Exceptions

The Act allows a lower rate of $8.50 an hour for a student regularly enrolled in secondary school who works after school hours or when school is not in session. There is no general youth or small-employer rate. The Act’s definition of “employee” leaves out several groups, including bona fide executive, administrative and professional employees and supervisors, salespeople and workers paid by piecework, flat rate or commission, registered apprentices and learners, and some agricultural workers. Federal law can still require the federal minimum wage and overtime for them.

What this means for hiring

Outside Santa Fe, the legal floor has not moved since 2023, so what candidates respond to is the rate the local market pays, not the law. Santa Fe is the exception to plan for: every role in the city has to be at $17.50 or more from January 1, 2027, and any ad still running on that date needs the new rate.

Use the employee cost calculator to see what a New Mexico hire costs at the wage you plan to pay. For breaks, overtime, final pay, paid sick leave and hiring rules, see New Mexico labor laws, and for how to put the rate in the first line of the ad, see job ad copywriting.

Frequently asked questions

Part of Boostpoint’s minimum wage by state series.