Florida Wage & Hour Compliance Issue Spotter

The problem

Florida wage-and-hour compliance involves more than applying the federal minimum wage and overtime rules. Employers and reviewers must account for Florida’s constitutional minimum wage, the fixed state tip-credit limitation, worker classification, industry-specific requirements, child-labor rules, payment-method protections, county wage-recovery procedures, public-sector rules, federal contract requirements, and changing federal regulations.

Using the wrong effective date, treating a mandatory service charge as a tip, applying an obsolete statute, or importing another state’s rules can produce a confident but legally incorrect conclusion.

What it does

The Florida Wage & Hour Compliance Issue Spotter provides a structured framework for identifying potential wage-and-hour compliance issues under Florida and applicable federal law.

It can:

• Identify relevant wage-and-hour issues across 64 specialized legal modules covering classification, exemptions, minimum wage, overtime, hours worked, tips, commissions, deductions, payment methods, final pay, child labor, public employees, special industries, and remedies.
• Apply Florida’s $14.00 minimum wage through September 29, 2026, and the $15.00 rate beginning September 30, 2026.
• Apply Florida’s maximum $3.02 tip credit and calculate tipped overtime from the employee’s full regular rate rather than multiplying only the tipped cash wage.
• Distinguish mandatory service charges from tips and identify regular-rate consequences.
• Separate Florida’s narrow manual-labor extra-pay statute from ordinary federal weekly overtime requirements.
• Review county wage-recovery procedures in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Pinellas without treating those programs as higher local minimum-wage laws.
• Spot-check current child-labor scheduling, break, hazardous-work, proof-of-age, and waiver requirements.
• Review day-labor pools, farm and migrant labor, domestic work, hospitality, health care, transportation, construction, public employment, and federal-contract overlays.
• Evaluate employee versus independent-contractor and joint-employer issues using the legally applicable tests.
• Separate proposed federal rules, repealed provisions, dated guidance, and currently effective law.
• Generate Quick Scan, Standard Review, or Full Audit outputs depending on the complexity of the request.
• Label provided facts, allegations, reasonable inferences, unknowns, unresolved legal questions, and calculation assumptions separately.
• Produce prioritized issue matrices, calculations, document requests, source lists, and recommended next steps.

Frameworks and authorities

The Skill routes analysis through relevant authorities, which may include:

• Florida Constitution Article X, Section 24;
• the Florida Minimum Wage Act;
• Florida Statutes Chapters 448, 450, and 532;
• the Fair Labor Standards Act and Portal-to-Portal Act;
• applicable provisions of 29 C.F.R.;
• current Florida Department of Commerce materials;
• current U.S. Department of Labor and OSHA guidance;
• Miami-Dade, Broward, and Pinellas wage-recovery programs;
• public-sector rules, collective bargaining agreements, government contracts, and special-industry requirements when applicable.

Dynamic rates, deadlines, proposed rules, local procedures, and recently amended laws must be verified against current official sources before an unqualified current-law conclusion is given.

Why this is more reliable than a generic prompt

General AI answers frequently overlook Florida-specific rules or confidently apply outdated information. This Skill contains explicit safeguards against common errors, including:

• applying the $15.00 minimum wage before September 30, 2026;
• calculating tipped overtime by multiplying only the cash wage by 1.5;
• treating mandatory service charges as tips;
• importing California-style daily overtime, meal premiums, pay-stub penalties, or waiting-time penalties;
• treating county wage-recovery programs as higher local minimum wages;
• applying former Florida Statutes Section 686.201 even though it was repealed;
• assuming every salaried employee is exempt;
• applying proposed federal rules as if they were already effective;
• treating a missing document or allegation as a proven violation;
• combining overlapping remedies without checking for double recovery.

The Skill also requires effective-date segmentation, source verification, evidence classification, calculation transparency, and explicit disclosure when information cannot be confirmed.

What the purchaser receives

The downloadable package includes:

• an installable cross-platform SKILL.md;
• a detailed 64-module Florida and federal legal framework;
• a dated 2026 rates and thresholds reference;
• an official authority map;
• a coverage and boundary matrix;
• 55 QA test specifications;
• a behavioral validation report;
• a legal and product audit report;
• installation and usage instructions;
• integrity checksums and commercial license terms.

The package is designed for use with compatible AI agents and workspaces that can load Agent Skills-style instructions and supporting reference files.