New York’s minimum wage reaches $17.00 an hour on January 1, 2027, in the city, on Long Island and in Westchester County [6]. The national median for stockers and order fillers — the job that same federal table also calls order picker — is $17.95 [3]. That 95-cent gap leaves almost no slack in a warehouse payback model built on the national average.

The big picture:

A robot case rests on one fact that is public before anyone signs: the wage the machine replaces. The federal government prints a median wage for each job every year. State labor agencies set legal floors on dated schedules [1][5][6].

The floors are not one number. States on the federal rate sit at $7.25 an hour [5]. Oregon runs from $16.80 in Portland through $15.55 in its standard counties to $14.55 in its rural ones [5]. New York’s rate reaches $17.00 in January [6].

So the same robot pays back differently in each state, before anyone counts a single hour of work.

My read: operators rarely pick the wrong robot. They pick the wrong wage. Blending warehouse pay into one number hides two facts: which job the machine replaces, and which state it stands in.

The third input is the one nobody publishes. Turnover is measured locally, and the closest thing to a national number is a survey of sites [7].

By the numbers

  • $22.32 an hour — The priciest job in the building: Industrial truck and tractor operators, the forklift jobs, earn a median of $46,420 a year [1].
  • $17.44 an hour — The cheapest packing wage: Hand packers sit at the other end of that table [4]. The two ends of a warehouse job list are about 28% apart.
  • $17.00 an hour — The highest legal floor: New York’s rate takes effect on January 1, 2027, with $16.00 in the rest of the state [6]. The 2027 inflation step was blocked by a condition the state calls an off-ramp [6].
  • 55% of operations — Low-turnover sites: Just over half of surveyed sites see yearly turnover at or below 15%. Another 29% see 16% to 30% [7]. In peak periods, temp workers are 30% or more of those teams [7].

What I’d watch:

I am watching how teams use these public tables when they write capital plans.

  • The roadmap order: Replacing a $22.32 truck-operator hour saves more than replacing a $17.44 packing hour [1][4]. The two picker jobs sit between them, at $19.35 for material handlers and $17.95 for order pickers [2][3]. I expect the upgrades that work to target the highest-wage roles first, not the easiest aisle to fence.
  • The state-by-state page: One blended wage cannot hold when a network spans a $7.25 floor and a $16.80 floor [5]. Teams with sites in several states are building a payback page for each one. I would want to read the notes at the top of each one.
  • The budget in picker-years: The survey’s median capital and technology budget is $425,000, against a $2.16 million average [7]. At the $19.35 hand-mover median [2], that is about 22,000 hours. It is roughly ten years of one full-time picker at 2,080 hours a year. I would rather read a capital plan in picker-years than in robot units.
  • The peak hour: Temp workers make up 30% or more of a peak workforce [7]. Oregon’s page states the minimum-wage rule with no exception for temporary staff [5]. Whether a payback model prices those hours at the floor or at an agency rate is worth knowing.

The catch

The legal floor only sets the bottom of the pay band. Most buildings pay above it, and the medians in the federal table are national figures, not this building’s numbers [1][3]. The floor is a guardrail on the lowest-paid hours, not a quote for the hour a machine replaces.

The floors also move at different speeds. New York paused its 2027 inflation step under one of the law’s rules [6]. Oregon resets every July 1 and prices its rural tier $2.25 below Portland [5]. The federal floor has stayed at $7.25 [5].

The turnover figure is a spread across many sites, not a forecast for one [8]. The extremes are real: a field case on this desk has a Midwest distributor at 48% yearly turnover [8]. Its starting wage climbed from $16.50 to $22.00, and its manual picking cost per unit rose 38% [8].

The part I keep circling: the wage floor is public and dated, while turnover is local and not published. Both land in the same savings line, and only one can be looked up.

At a glance

  • The Big Shift: The wage in an automation case is public twice: a median for each job from the federal wage table, and a legal floor from each state [1][5][6].
  • Why It Matters: State floors run from $7.25 to $17.00, and warehouse jobs pay from $17.44 to $22.32 [1][4][5][6]. One blended wage throws off the math depending on the state and the job.
  • What I’d Watch: How teams turn public wage tables into local capital plans.
  • The roadmap order: Ordering robots by the wage each job carries, not by which aisle is easiest to fence [1][4].
  • The floor path: Reading each state’s dated rate window and its indexing rule, including the rules that pause an increase [5][6].
  • The picker-year budget: Writing capital plans as the picker-hours they equal, so $425,000 reads as roughly ten years of one picker [2][7].
  • The Catch: The legal floor only controls the lowest-paid hours, and the medians are national. The published tables set the range for a decision, not the cost of the hour a machine replaces [1][5].

Related reading

Sources

[1] O*NET OnLine (U.S. Department of Labor) — Industrial Truck and Tractor Operators (53-7051.00), Wages & Employment Trends, 2025 median wages — https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/53-7051.00 [2] O*NET OnLine — Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand (53-7062.00), Wages & Employment Trends, 2025 median wages — https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/53-7062.00 [3] O*NET OnLine — Stockers and Order Fillers (53-7065.00), Wages & Employment Trends, 2025 median wages — https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/53-7065.00 [4] O*NET OnLine — Packers and Packagers, Hand (53-7064.00), Wages & Employment Trends, 2025 median wages — https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/53-7064.00 [5] Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries — “Minimum wage” (rates for July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027, and the federal minimum wage) — https://www.oregon.gov/boli/workers/pages/minimum-wage.aspx [6] New York State Department of Labor — “Minimum Wage” (rates effective January 1, 2027, and the statutory off-ramps) — https://dol.ny.gov/minimum-wage-0 [7] Modern Materials Handling — “2025 Warehouse/DC Operations Survey: Tech investment marches on” — https://www.mmh.com/article/2025_warehouse_dc_operations_survey_tech_investment_marches_on [8] Editorial-factory field notes, warehouse_automation_robotics_capex Anecdote 2 (internal) — context/growth_os/customer-truth.md