Minimum Wage & Unemployment Updates for Rhode Island

While the New Year is fast approaching, two states with January 1, 2019 minimum wage increases have not yet released their updated notices. However, the small but mighty state of Rhode Island has made it to the finish line ahead of these remaining and much larger states, Michigan and New York.

Rhode Island’s Department of Labor and Training (DLT) has released the new 2019 Minimum Wage notice, as well as an update to the Unemployment/Disability Benefits notice, both of which have a revision date of 1/2019.

Info for Employers and Employees

2019 Minimum Wage Rates

Effective January 1, 2019, Rhode Island’s minimum wage increases to $10.50 per hour. Once again, the tipped wage has not increased and will remain at $3.89 in 2019.

Full-time students under 19 years of age who work for nonprofit religious, educational, or community service organizations, as well as libraries, must be paid a new wage of $9.45 per hour, which is 90% of the minimum wage.

For minors who are 14 and 15 years old and work no more than 24 hours in a week, the new wage rate is $7.58 per hour, which is 75% of the minimum wage.

Change to Unemployment Benefits

The updated Unemployment/Disability Benefits notice now states that unemployment insurance claims must be filed the same week an employee is either unemployed or working reduced hours.

That’s All for Now”…

There are currently no updates to the rest of the notices on the Rhode Island State Poster. If anything changes, we’ll be sure to alert our customers in The Ocean State.

Compliance Made Easy!

If you have not already done so, we encourage you to order our 1-Year Compliance Plan, so that you will automatically receive the updated Rhode Island poster as soon as it is available. And because we provide free poster updates for mandatory changes, no matter how many occur during the 12-month period, you can always count on Poster Compliance Center to keep you in compliance!