NEW YORK WHAT THE LAW ENTITLES YOU TO
Most people know about minimum wage and overtime. Fewer know that New York also requires a written pay notice at hire, a pay statement with every paycheck, and an extra hour for long days. Fewer still know that a claim reaches back six years. Here is the list.
YOUR RIGHTS UNDER NEW YORK LABOR LAW
If one of these is missing from your job, it may be a claim, and the clock on it is already running.
Your rate, overtime rate, how you are paid, your regular payday, and the employer’s name and address, in English and, where the State provides a template, in your primary language. Missing: up to $5,000 in statutory damages ($50 a workday).
Dates covered, hours, rates, gross pay, every deduction, and net pay. Missing or wrong: up to $5,000 in statutory damages ($250 a workday).
$17.00 an hour in New York City, Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester, $16.00 elsewhere, as of January 1, 2026. Tipped food-service workers have a cash floor of $11.35 or $10.70. The employer loses the tip credit entirely if it never gave written notice. It also loses it for any shift where you spent two hours or more, or more than 20 percent of your time, on work that earns no tips.
One and a half times your regular rate. A salary or a “manager” title does not remove it unless the employer proves your duties fit an exemption. For the manager and office-work exemptions your salary must also be at least $1,275 a week in the city, Long Island and Westchester, or $1,199.10 elsewhere.
When your workday spans more than ten hours from first clock-in to last clock-out, including a split shift, New York adds one hour of pay at the minimum wage. In restaurants and hotels it is owed at every pay level.
If you report for a shift and are sent home, you are owed at least three hours, or the length of your scheduled shift if it was shorter, with the unworked part paid at the minimum rate.
No owner, manager or supervisor may take a share of tips. A mandatory service charge on a bill belongs to the staff unless the customer was clearly told otherwise.
Deductions for shortages, breakage, walked checks, uniforms, tools or “training” are unlawful. The list of allowed deductions is short and needs your written consent.
Manual workers must be paid every week, within seven days of the week worked. Since a 2025 amendment, a first violation by an employer that paid at least twice a month is a limited claim on its own, but it still counts.
If you must wear a uniform the employer does not launder, New York adds a weekly allowance based on your hours, unless the uniform is wash-and-wear and the employer gives you enough of them.
Firing, cutting or threatening a worker for complaining about pay is illegal. In New York, threatening to report someone’s immigration status because they complained is a separate violation, with liquidated damages up to $20,000.
New York City employers must provide safe and sick leave, up to 40 or 56 hours a year depending on size (unpaid at the smallest employers), plus, since February 22, 2026, 32 hours of unpaid protected time off each year. State law adds sick leave for the rest of New York based on the employer’s size and income.
WHAT A CASE CAN RECOVER
New York Labor Law reaches back six years from filing; the federal law reaches two, or three if willful. Each paycheck is its own claim.
Unless the employer proves a good-faith basis, the law adds an amount equal to the unpaid wages.
Prejudgment interest at 9% a year on the wages, and an automatic 15% increase if a judgment is still unpaid 90 days after it becomes final.
Up to $10,000 for missing pay notices and statements, and the employer pays your reasonable attorney’s fees and costs if you win.
NEW YORK
Tell us the employer, your hours and how you were paid. A lawyer reads every message and checks the six-year clock first.
Tell us what happened (718) 484-7510Legal information reviewed: September 16, 2026. Wage rates and legal rules can change; this page is general information, not legal advice.