$15.15State minimum wage for 2026 — CPI-indexed each January 1Prop 206 / A.R.S. §23-363
$18.35Flagstaff minimum wage for 2026 — tip credit eliminatedcity ordinance
1:30Paid sick time accrual — one hour per 30 hours workedA.R.S. §23-372
0Binding statewide heat standards for outdoor work2026 guidance is voluntary
Arizona in short
Arizona has no daily overtime, no meal breaks, and no rest breaks for adults under state law. Hours run on the federal FLSA: 1.5× the regular rate past 40 in a workweek. What Arizona does add comes from Proposition 206, the 2016 ballot measure that both raised the minimum wage and created a statewide paid sick time entitlement. The minimum wage is CPI-indexed and adjusts every January 1, reaching $15.15 an hour for 2026, and Flagstaff sets a substantially higher local rate — $18.35 for 2026, with the tip credit eliminated entirely.
Paid sick time accrues at one hour per 30 hours worked, capped at 24 hours a year for employers with fewer than 15 employees and 40 hours a year at 15 or more. On heat, Arizona has no binding statewide standard: the Industrial Commission’s April 2026 update to its Heat Emphasis Program is voluntary guidance and an enforcement priority, not a codified rule. Several cities — Phoenix, Tempe, Tucson, Pima County — impose heat requirements, but generally on public-contract construction rather than all private work.
Summary as of July 2026 — rules move; verify current requirements with the Arizona labor department and qualified counsel. The California column is there for scale, not because it applies to you: it's the regime CDO's engine was built to, which is why Arizona's rules run inside it with room to spare.
What Arizona employers actually have to get right
On hours, Arizona is federal-plain: overtime past 40 in a workweek, no daily overtime, no double time, and no state-mandated meal or rest breaks for adults. A bill to create break requirements (HB 2466) has been introduced but is not law. Any break you do give that runs under 20 minutes is paid time under federal rules.
Proposition 206 is what makes Arizona payroll non-trivial. It indexes the minimum wage to inflation with an adjustment every January 1 — $15.15 for 2026 — so a rate hardcoded in your payroll system goes stale on a predictable annual schedule. Flagstaff runs its own materially higher ordinance at $18.35 for 2026, and has eliminated the tip credit outright starting in 2026. A contractor working jobs in both Phoenix and Flagstaff is running two wage floors.
Prop 206 also created paid sick time accruing at one hour per 30 hours worked (A.R.S. §23-372), capped at 24 hours per year for employers with fewer than 15 employees and 40 hours at 15 or more. For hourly field crews with variable weekly hours, this is the requirement most often under-tracked — accrual has to follow actual hours worked, which means it has to follow the timeclock, not a flat monthly grant.
Heat is Arizona’s most misunderstood area, and precision matters. There is no binding statewide heat standard. The Industrial Commission of Arizona updated its Heat Emphasis Program in April 2026 and Governor Hobbs’s Executive Order 2025-09 created a Workplace Heat Safety Task Force in May 2025 — but what came out of that is guidance and an enforcement priority, not a codified regulation with a temperature trigger and mandatory rest schedule. Municipal rules do exist (Phoenix’s took effect around April 2024, with Tempe, Tucson, and Pima County following) and they generally bind public-contract construction rather than every private job.
That patchwork is precisely the case for enforcing heat-recovery breaks in software rather than by memory. CDO prompts and logs cool-down periods on outdoor work regardless of which jurisdiction a job site sits in — so the record exists whether the rule was mandatory, contractual, or simply the right call in 112°F.
The one most Arizona contractors get wrong
The Prop 206 paid sick time accrual is tied to hours actually worked, at one hour per thirty — not to headcount, not to a flat monthly grant. Contractors with seasonal or variable-hour crews routinely under-accrue, because a worker who runs 55-hour weeks in July accrues far faster than a flat allotment assumes. The accrual has to be computed off the timeclock. Separately: Arizona’s minimum wage moves every January 1 on a CPI formula, so a hardcoded rate is guaranteed to be wrong within twelve months.
Wherever the rules land on the strictness scale, the constant is the same: disputes are decided by records. CDO's GPS-verified, minute-level, bilingual punch trail — reviewed by AI, with exceptions surfaced for human judgment — is the record that wins them. See why teams pick CDO →