Idaho Prevailing Wage

Idaho repealed its state prevailing wage law in 1985, making it one of the earliest western states to do so. For contractors bidding work in Idaho today, this means there is no state-mandated wage schedule for public works, and you are free to price labor at your actual market rates on state, county, and municipal projects. That flexibility can sharpen a competitive bid, but it also shifts full responsibility for labor pricing onto your estimating team rather than a published rate book.

The critical exception is federal funding. The federal Davis-Bacon Act still governs any construction project that receives federal dollars and exceeds $2,000. On those jobs you must pay the U.S. Department of Labor prevailing wage determination for the project's county and trade classifications, and you must submit weekly certified payroll (WH-347) to the contracting agency. Misclassifying workers or pricing labor at open-market rates on a federally funded Idaho project is a common and expensive estimating mistake.

Before you bid, confirm the funding source in the solicitation. Federal-aid highway work, HUD-funded housing, and projects tied to federal infrastructure grants all trigger Davis-Bacon even when the owner is a local Idaho agency. Build the correct wage and fringe rates, plus the administrative cost of certified-payroll compliance, into your labor line for any federally assisted job, and treat purely state or private Idaho work as a free-market labor environment.