In case you’ve been living under a rock.....

From tomorrow, April 1st...

• The Adult minimum wage increases → $23.95 per hour (up from $23.50)
• The Starting-out & training wage increases → $19.16 per hour (up from $18.80)

If you’ve got staff on or near minimum wage, now’s the time to check:

• Have the rates been updated in your payroll software?
• Do salaries still stack up when you break them down to hourly?

Because this is one of those changes that’s very easy to miss…
and very annoying to fix after payroll’s been run.

It is also important to note that when the minimum wage change takes effect mid-pay week, you can’t just apply a single rate for the entire period.

It is best practice to split the pay period, assuming your payroll can do this. 

What does that mean in practice?

If your pay week runs, say, Monday to Sunday:

• Hours worked before 1 April → paid at the old rate ($23.50 / $18.80)
• Hours worked on and after 1 April → paid at the new rate ($23.95 / $19.16)

Why this matters

If you don’t split it and just:

• Pay everything at the old rate → you underpay
• Pay everything at the new rate → you overpay. While this is ok, most employers would want to avoid overpayment. 

Most payroll systems won’t magically fix this unless you tell them to.

The minimum wage is assessed per hour worked, not averaged over the pay period.

So you can’t “smooth it out” over the week to make it look right.

Simple takeaway

If the rate changes mid-pay cycle:

• Split the hours
• Apply the correct rate to each portion
• Double-check anyone sitting close to the minimum

This is one of those classic “looks simple, causes rework” payroll moments.