Baltimore raises contract worker pay with new living wage rule

Baltimore’s new $17.17-an-hour living wage took effect Wednesday for workers on city service contracts, raising pay for about 3,500 people tied to publicly funded work. The rule also requires overtime at one and a half times the regular rate after eight hours in a day or 40 in a week, so the first paychecks affected by the change will reflect the higher floor after July 1.

The policy is meant to ensure public dollars reach the workers doing the jobs that keep city services moving. Baltimore City Code § 26-16 sets the living hourly wage by resolution of the Board of Estimates, and the Wage Commission must recommend a revised rate by Dec. 15 each year. The annual adjustment will track the Consumer Price Index for the Washington-Baltimore-Arlington metropolitan area, tying the wage to inflation instead of leaving it frozen.

A worker who had been paid the previous $15.45 rate, which started July 1, 2025, would now earn $1.72 more an hour. Someone still paid the $13.33 rate that began July 1, 2023, would see a jump of $3.84 an hour. On a 40-hour week, that works out to as much as $68.80 more before taxes for the worker coming from $15.45, and $153.60 more for the worker coming from $13.33.

Contractors must keep the living wage rate visible at the worksite and provide a copy to workers on request. The city’s Wage Commission, which enforces the living wage, minimum wage, prevailing wage and displaced-workers laws, had a meeting scheduled for July 1 at 3 p.m. Maryland’s separate state living-wage system places Baltimore City in a Tier 1 area.

Maryland’s labor department says Baltimore was the first city to enforce a living wage law in 1994, and more than 140 cities have since adopted similar rules.