Rural Alaska contract workers lost a federal wage floor; the state stepped in

For years, the lowest-paid workers on federal service contracts across rural Alaska had a wage floor of $17.75 an hour. That floor is gone.

President Trump's Executive Order 14236, signed March 14, 2025, revoked the Biden-era order behind the $17.75 minimum, and the Department of Labor stopped enforcing it. Older covered contracts reverted to a lower floor, now $13.65 an hour as of May 11, 2026. For contracts entered after January 2022, the department hasn't said what applies beyond the $7.25 federal baseline.

What backstops those workers instead is Alaska's own minimum wage, which rose to $14.00 on July 1, 2026, under voter-approved Ballot Measure 1 — above the $13.65 federal floor. Because employers must pay whichever rate is higher, the state minimum now sets the real floor for most covered workers in Alaska.

Higher-skill jobs are untouched. The Labor Department's latest wage determination for 14 Alaska regions, from the North Slope to the Aleutians East Borough, still sets prevailing rates far above any minimum: $77.08 an hour for a nuclear medicine technologist, $62.12 for a dental hygienist, $52.15 for a registered nurse.

Employer-side advisors say the shifting federal rules fall hardest on small rural contractors sorting out which floor applies where.