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 | Statute |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | Yes | all public works projects | public works projects | Department of Industrial Relations | ||
| Colorado | Yes | $500,000 | public projects — any construction, alteration, repair, demolition, or improvement of any land, building, structure, facility, road, highway, bridge, or other public improvement | Office of the State Architect | state (projects utilizing federal funds are exempt from these requirements) | C.R.S. §24-92-201 |
| Hawaii | Yes | $2,000 | construction of a public work project to which a governmental contracting agency is a party | Department of Labor and Industrial Relations | state and local (governmental contracting agency) | HRS §104-2 |
| Maryland | Yes | $250,000 | state or political subdivision construction contracts including school construction | Division of Labor and Industry, Prevailing Wage Unit | state funding of 25% or more | State Finance and Procurement Article, Section 17-201 |
| Minnesota | Yes | $25,000 (or $2,500 for single-trade projects) | projects financed in whole or part by state funds | Department of Labor and Industry | state-funded (in whole or part) | Minnesota Statutes 177.41 to 177.44 |
| 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 | |
| Nevada | Yes | $100,000 | public works | Office of the Labor Commissioner | state and local | NRS 338.080 |
| Oregon | Yes | no minimum (all public works) | all public works projects in the state of Oregon | Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) | state and local (public works) | |
| Rhode Island | Yes | $1,000 | public works projects — all craftsmen, mechanics, laborers, teamsters, and other workers | Department of Labor and Training | state or municipal funds | RIGL 37-13 |
| Virginia | Yes | $250,000 | public works — the operation, erection, construction, alteration, improvement, maintenance, or repair of any public facility or immovable property owned, used, or leased by a state agency or locality | Department of Labor and Industry | state-funded (or local, if locality has adopted an ordinance) | Virginia Code 2-2-4321.3 |
| Washington | Yes | no minimum (all public works) | construction, reconstruction, maintenance or repair funded by any public dollars, including building service maintenance, landscape construction and grounds maintenance, and small projects | Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) | any public dollars (direct or indirect) for any portion of the project |
Where this came from
Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 11 sources this dataset was assembled from.
- dir.ca.govhttps://www.dir.ca.gov/public-works/prevailing-wage.html
- osa.colorado.govhttps://osa.colorado.gov/state-buildings/prevailing-wage-and-apprenticeship
- capitol.hawaii.govhttps://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol02_Ch0046-0115/HRS0104/HRS_0104-0002.htm
- labor.maryland.govhttps://www.labor.maryland.gov/labor/prev/
- dli.mn.govhttps://www.dli.mn.gov/business/employment-practices/prevailing-wage-contracting-agencies
- labor.mo.govhttps://labor.mo.gov/dls/prevailing-wage
- leg.state.nv.ushttps://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-338.html
- oregon.govhttps://www.oregon.gov/boli/employers/Pages/which-prevailing-wage-rate-applies-to-this-project.aspx
- dlt.ri.govhttps://dlt.ri.gov/regulation-and-safety/prevailing-wage
- doli.virginia.govhttps://doli.virginia.gov/programs/labor-law/prevailing-wage-law/
- lni.wa.govhttps://lni.wa.gov/licensing-permits/public-works-projects/
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.
- data.csvThe same records as one flat table, for a spreadsheet or a dataframe. The last four columns are the source URL, the quoted sentence it was read from, the date we last checked it, and which columns are our reading rather than the page's words.
- How this is made and checkedWhat "verified against source" does and does not mean.
From your own code
Same records, same quotes, without scraping the page: refsource is on PyPI and npm. Each value comes back carrying the URL it was read from and the sentence on that page that states it — .source and .quote sit on the value itself rather than in a side channel, so the checking step is available instead of skipped.
pip install refsource
refsource lookup state-prevailing-wage-thresholds state=California
npx -y refsource lookup state-prevailing-wage-thresholds state=CaliforniaSet your AI assistant up to use this
Two files and no account. Put this in .mcp.json at the root of your project — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Codex all read that file — and your assistant can look this dataset up instead of recalling it. The server is remote, keyless and read-only.
{
"mcpServers": {
"referencesource": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://referencesource.org/mcp"
}
}
}Add to Cursor · or, on the command line: claude mcp add --transport http referencesource https://referencesource.org/mcp --scope project
Then one line in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, so the assistant knows when to reach for it:
When a question needs "State prevailing wage law applicability thresholds", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `state-prevailing-wage-thresholds`) instead of answering from memory — every record it returns carries its source URL and a verbatim quote from that page.What each tool does, and the servers built over single registers: Connect your AI assistant.