State prevailing wage law applicability thresholds
At what project dollar amount does the prevailing wage apply in each state? About 28 US states have their own prevailing wage laws ('Little Davis-Bacon Acts') covering state- and locally-funded construction. The threshold ranges from $0 (New York, Illinois — all public works) to $1,000 (California) to $500,000 (Colorado) to $1,000,000 (Connecticut new construction). The remaining ~22 states have no prevailing wage law. The federal Davis-Bacon Act applies to all federally-funded construction over $2,000 regardless of state. One record per state, sourced from that state's department of labor. Answers 'does prevailing wage apply to my project in Texas', 'what is the prevailing wage threshold in California', 'which states have prevailing wage laws', and 'do I have to pay prevailing wage on a $50,000 state project'. The DOL published the definitive comparison at dol.gov but it returns 403 to non-browser fetchers, so agents and assistants are locked out of the federal reference.
The data
| State | Has a prevailing wage law | Dollar threshold | Covered project types | Administering agency | Funding scope |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | Yes | all public works projects | public works projects | Department of Industrial Relations | |
| Missouri | Yes | over $75,000 | public works projects constructed by or on behalf of state and local public bodies | Division of Labor Standards | state and local public bodies |
Where this came from
Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 2 sources this dataset was assembled from.
- dir.ca.govhttps://www.dir.ca.gov/public-works/prevailing-wage.html
- labor.mo.govhttps://labor.mo.gov/dls/prevailing-wage
Machine-readable
- data.jsonThe whole dataset — every record with its source URL and source quote.
- Open Knowledge Format bundleOne JSON object per line — every record's frontmatter and quoted span exactly as it is held here, in one fetch.
- How this is made and checkedWhat "verified against source" does and does not mean.