Florida county and city governments can no longer reward contractors for offering superior wages or benefits when awarding public contracts. The final provision of House Bill (HB) 433 took effect September 30. The 2024 state law progressively stripped local governments of several workplace regulatory powers, and this last piece ends a procurement structure that had given service contractors a direct financial incentive to offer better compensation packages.
Under the new rules, local governments are prohibited from using their purchasing or contracting power to require companies to pay above state or federal wage minimums, mandate benefits not otherwise required by law, or give preferential treatment to bidders offering better pay and benefits packages. The restrictions apply to contracts entered into on or after September 30. Existing contracts with local wage or benefit conditions remain in force until they expire or are renewed, according to a client alert published by Fisher Phillips, a national employment law firm with offices in Florida.
The jurisdictions most directly affected are those that had been using local procurement standards to raise the compensation floor for contracted workers. Broward County and Miami-Dade County are examples. Both had living wage ordinances that required service contractors and subcontractors to pay wages and, in some tiers, provide health benefits above the state minimum as a condition of doing business with the county. Covered workers included airport concessionaires, security firms, janitorial companies, and healthcare service providers.
Those requirements can no longer be imposed on new contracts. Notably, September 30 is also the date Florida’s statewide minimum wage reached $15 per hour, providing a partial wage floor, but the benefits mandate disappears entirely for new agreements.
Removing the procurement incentive does not remove the workforce stability calculation. Contractors that depended on the local ordinance to justify their benefits spend now face a genuine strategic question: whether to maintain those benefits voluntarily, and on what basis.
That question is where a benefits advisor adds direct value. Nearly two-thirds of US employers reported annual turnover of 10% or higher in 2025, according to Gallagher’s 2026 US Workforce Trends Report, drawn from 3,717 organizations. For contractors in service industries, where margins are tight, labor is the primary cost, and turnover directly affects contract performance, the workforce cost of rolling back benefits can outpace the savings. Employers who have cut benefits to reduce costs have found the retention consequences surface quickly, with engagement declining before turnover numbers move.
