The Missouri minimum wage climbed to $15.00 per hour on January 1, 2026, and the state’s voter-approved paid sick leave mandate has been rolled back. Both changes are now in effect, yet many handbooks, payroll settings, offer letters, and manager scripts still describe the old rules. That gap between what the law says and what your written policies promise is exactly where employment disputes start. If your company operates in Missouri, the cleanup is overdue.
A wage-and-leave update is not finished because someone forwarded an article to HR. Your business needs to know what it is legally required to do, what it voluntarily chooses to keep doing, and whether every manager is explaining the policy the same way. This article walks through the new $15.00 wage floor, the paid sick leave reversal under HB 567, and the practical handbook reset that keeps your policy file from becoming a liability.
What You’ll Learn
- What the new $15.00 Missouri minimum wage actually changed in 2026
- How HB 567 reversed Missouri’s paid sick leave mandate
- What paid sick time employers may keep versus drop
- Why an outdated handbook now tells employees the wrong story
- A step-by-step payroll-and-policy reset you can run this quarter
- Warning signs your policy file has become a legal liability
- Answers to the questions Missouri employers ask most
The $15 Missouri Minimum Wage and What Changed
In November 2024, nearly 58% of Missouri voters approved Proposition A. The measure raised the state’s hourly pay floor in two steps: to $13.75 on January 1, 2025, and to $15.00 on January 1, 2026. As of today, $15.00 per hour is the standard Missouri minimum wage for most private employers.
One piece of Proposition A did not survive. The original measure tied future wage increases to the Consumer Price Index beginning in 2027. The Missouri legislature eliminated those automatic, inflation-indexed bumps. The $15.00 rate stands, but the annual escalator that was supposed to follow it is gone.
Who the $15.00 floor covers
- Most private employers must pay at least $15.00 per hour to covered, non-exempt workers.
- Tipped employees may still be paid a lower cash wage, but the cash wage plus tips must reach the full $15.00 floor for every hour worked. If tips fall short, the employer makes up the difference.
- Retail and service businesses should confirm whether they fall under state rules, the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, or both, because coverage drives the math.
The wage number is the easy part. The harder part is making sure your tip-credit calculations, payroll software, wage posters, and offer letters all reflect $15.00 rather than a stale figure from 2024 or 2025. Employers building a team for the first time should review our guide to hiring your first employees before the next paycheck cycle.
The Paid Sick Leave Reversal Under HB 567
Proposition A did more than raise wages. It also created a statewide paid sick leave entitlement, letting employees earn one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. That mandate took effect May 1, 2025.
It did not last long. On July 10, 2025, Governor Mike Kehoe signed House Bill 567, which repealed the paid sick leave statute effective August 28, 2025. In practical terms, the statewide paid sick leave requirement applied for a roughly 17-week window, from May 1, 2025 through August 27, 2025. Employees stopped accruing statutory paid sick time for hours worked on or after August 28, 2025.
What employers may keep versus drop
- You may drop it. As of August 28, 2025, Missouri no longer requires private employers to provide statewide paid sick leave. A business that wants to stop offering it is generally free to do so.
- You may keep it. Employers that prefer to offer paid sick time as a recruiting and retention tool may continue voluntarily. The choice is now a business decision rather than a legal mandate.
- Watch local and contractual obligations. A voluntary policy, an existing employment agreement, a collective bargaining agreement, or a multi-state operation can still create paid leave duties. Dropping the benefit company-wide without checking those sources is risky.
The reversal is good news for employers who want flexibility, but only if the written policies reflect the decision. A handbook that still promises statutory paid sick time can bind you to a benefit the law no longer requires.
Why the Handbook Now Tells the Wrong Story
Employment problems rarely begin with a lawsuit. They begin with an outdated handbook, a manager winging it, a missing acknowledgment, a bad template, or a payroll practice nobody has reviewed since the last legal update. After a year this eventful in Missouri employment law, the odds that your policy file is current are low.
Here is where the language tends to go stale:
- Handbooks still promise paid sick time accrual even when the business no longer wants to offer it.
- Tipped-employee policies reference an old wage rate and outdated tip-credit math instead of the 2026 $15.00 floor.
- Attendance and discipline policies conflict with any paid leave the employer voluntarily decides to keep.
- Offer letters, job postings, and manager scripts contradict the current handbook.
- Payroll was updated to $15.00, but the written policies were never touched.
These are operational problems with legal consequences. They affect payroll accuracy, morale, manager consistency, employee complaints, agency risk, and how credible your business looks if it ever has to defend its own practices. A clean policy file is also part of broader compliance and regtech discipline that protects the company across every function.
A Payroll-and-Policy Reset Worth Running Now
Howard East helps Missouri employers clean up written policies, payroll assumptions, wage notices, leave language, offer letters, and manager-facing guidance so the company stops operating under rules that no longer match the law or its own intentions. Depending on the facts, this can be scoped as a defined project rather than an open-ended engagement.
A typical reset includes the following work:
- Review the current handbook, PTO policy, attendance policy, and wage and tip language.
- Draft revised Missouri leave and wage provisions aligned with the employer’s business decision on paid sick time.
- Prepare manager-facing guidance on sick-time requests, voluntary leave, and attendance discipline.
- Create a payroll and poster compliance checklist tied to the $15.00 rate.
- Help multi-state employers avoid blending Missouri rules with Illinois, New York, or Wisconsin requirements.
The deliverable is not a memo full of theory. It is a usable package: a markup, a checklist, a manager script, a revised handbook section, and an implementation roadmap. A defined cleanup is also a strong flat-fee candidate, because the work product is identifiable up front. A sensible staged path looks like this:
A phased approach you can approve in steps
- Phase 1: Handbook and payroll-policy gap review.
- Phase 2: Revised handbook provisions and employee acknowledgment forms.
- Phase 3: Manager script, wage and tip checklist, and implementation memo.
The business decides at each stage. Start with the immediate issue, review the result, then decide whether the next phase is worth the spend. That is far easier to approve than a blank check. The same staged logic applies whether you bring on full-time staff or work with a contract lawyer for a discrete project, and it pairs well with the entity housekeeping covered in our overview of LLC operating agreements. For tightening the day-to-day execution behind these policies, our partners at Collateral Base help build the operations and standard operating procedures that keep managers consistent.
Signs the Policy File Is a Liability
You do not need a lawsuit to know your documents are out of date. Watch for these red flags, any one of which means the file needs attention before the next employee complaint, manager mistake, job posting, or agency inquiry:
- The handbook still promises statutory paid sick time that HB 567 repealed.
- Managers are repeating old talking points about accrual or wage rates.
- Tipped employees are not being trued up to the $15.00 wage floor.
- Payroll was updated, but the policies were not.
- Offer letters, the handbook, and actual day-to-day practice do not match.
This is not glamorous legal work. It is something better: the kind of cleanup that prevents avoidable employee claims, payroll confusion, and expensive misunderstandings. If a dispute does escalate despite a clean file, the litigation defense team at Howard Law can step in to defend the matter. The goal of the reset, though, is to make sure that call never has to happen.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Missouri minimum wage in 2026?
The Missouri minimum wage is $15.00 per hour as of January 1, 2026, under Proposition A. It rose from $13.75 in 2025. Tipped employees may receive a lower cash wage, but cash wages plus tips must reach the full $15.00 floor for every hour worked. The inflation-indexed increases originally set to begin in 2027 were eliminated, so the rate is not currently scheduled to rise automatically.
Do Missouri employers still have to provide paid sick leave?
No. House Bill 567 repealed Missouri’s statewide paid sick leave mandate effective August 28, 2025. Employees stopped accruing statutory paid sick time for hours worked on or after that date. Employers may continue offering paid sick time voluntarily, but they are no longer legally required to do so. Existing agreements or multi-state operations may still create obligations, so review your specific situation.
Why does my employee handbook need updating now?
A handbook that still promises statutory paid sick leave or references an old wage rate can bind you to commitments the law no longer requires and create confusion that leads to claims. Updating the handbook, offer letters, manager scripts, and payroll settings together keeps your written policies consistent with the 2026 $15.00 wage floor and the HB 567 paid sick leave repeal.
Next Steps
If your Missouri policies, payroll, and manager scripts have not been reviewed since the 2026 wage increase and the HB 567 paid sick leave repeal, now is the time to align them. A defined handbook and payroll review closes the gap before it turns into an employee complaint or an agency inquiry.
Contact Howard East to request a flat-fee Missouri handbook and payroll-policy review tailored to your business.
For the official figures, see the Missouri Department of Labor minimum wage page, the state’s HB 567 paid sick time FAQ, and the U.S. Department of Labor minimum wage resource.
This article discusses Missouri law as of June 30, 2026 and is general information, not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading it. Attorney Advertising.
