Medicaid Work Requirement Hours Calculator

How the Medicaid work requirement counts your hours and pay

The requirement is a monthly test. For each month your state checks, you meet it in any one of these ways:

• 80 hours: work, community service, a work program, or any mix of them that adds up to at least 80 hours in the month.
• School: enrollment at least half-time, which counts for the whole month on its own.
• $580 of income: at least $580 of household income that Medicaid counts for the month. Seasonal workers can use their average over the past 6 months instead.

Work is broad. It covers a paid job, self-employment, work done for goods or services instead of money, and unpaid work. Community service counts when it's done through a public or nonprofit organization that tracks hours. In a work program, job search and job-search training count only while they're less than half of the program's hours. 80 hours comes to about 18.5 hours a week (80 ÷ 4.33), but the test is per calendar month, so a month with only 4 workweeks needs more per week.

If you're in school less than half-time, the rule turns credits into hours: each credit hour is 3 hours a week, times 4.33 weeks, or 12.99 hours a month. A 3-credit class gives 38.97 hours, which add to your work and volunteer hours. A program that doesn't use credits counts the hours you spend in class and in its activities. Your school, not Medicaid, decides whether you're half-time.

The $580 figure is the federal minimum wage, $7.25, times 80 hours. States can't swap in a higher state minimum wage, the tipped cash wage or a youth wage. The test uses your household's income under Medicaid's MAGI rules, not only your paycheck, so a spouse's pay counts toward it. At $15 an hour with no other household income, 38.67 work hours reach $580, under half of what the 80-hour path asks.

The two paths stay separate. Half the hours plus half the money doesn't make a month, and the calculator never adds hours to dollars. The rule does let a state turn income under $580 into hours, but only when the state has no record of the hours you worked: it divides your income by $7.25. In the rule's own example, $380 of income counts as 52 hours, and the person needs 28 more. That's a state option, so the calculator explains it here and leaves it out of the results. To turn a result such as 6.67 hours into hours and minutes, use the decimal hours converter.

Who has to meet it, and when your state starts

The requirement covers adults 19 through 64 in Medicaid's expansion group, plus adults a state covers the same way through a section 1115 waiver, as long as they aren't pregnant, aren't on Medicare and don't qualify for Medicaid another way. It applies in the 50 states and DC, not in the territories. KFF counts 41 adopters of the expansion, DC included.

Many people are excluded. The rule names people who are pregnant or postpartum, former foster youth under 26, Indians, Urban Indians and California Indians, parents and caregivers of a child 13 or under or of a disabled person, veterans with a total disability rating, and people who are medically frail. It also excludes people meeting their state's TANF work rules, people in SNAP households who are subject to SNAP's work rules, people in drug or alcohol treatment, and people in jail or prison or released within the last 3 months. A state can also count short hardship months as met, such as a hospital stay, a declared disaster or high local unemployment. Your state decides who fits each exclusion: the calculator lists them but doesn't decide them.

The federal start date is January 1, 2027. A state can start earlier, and Nebraska began on May 1, 2026. If you're already enrolled, your state checks at your first renewal on or after its start date. CMS can give a state that shows a good-faith effort more time, but never past December 31, 2028.

When you apply, your state checks 1 to 3 months in a row right before the month you apply, and the state chooses how many. Once you're enrolled, it checks at least 1 month between renewals, in a row or not. Expansion adults also move to a renewal every 6 months, starting with renewals scheduled on or after January 1, 2027. North Carolina, for example, checks 3 months in a row before an application and 3 of the 6 months before a renewal.

The rule is an interim final rule, in effect since July 31, 2026, so a final rule could change details. A lawsuit, Massachusetts v. Oz, challenges its medically frail provisions, and the court denied a preliminary injunction on July 29, 2026. Read the notices your state sends you.

Sources: the federal interim final rule (42 CFR 435.550 to 435.563), Public Law 119-21 (section 71119), the 2026 HHS poverty guidelines, and state pages from Nebraska, North Carolina and Virginia.

Working enough without earning too much: the 138% line

The expansion group covers adults with household income at or below 133% of the federal poverty line. Medicaid's income rules then subtract 5 percentage points of the poverty line for your household size, so the working limit is 138%. The 2026 HHS guideline is $15,960 a year for one person in the 48 states and DC, plus $5,680 for each added person. Alaska ($19,950, plus $7,100) and Hawaii ($18,360, plus $6,530) have their own. At 138%, the monthly lines are:

For one person in the 48 states and DC, that's $22,024.80 a year, and for four it's $45,540. Your Medicaid household follows tax rules: you, a spouse you live with, and anyone you expect to claim as a tax dependent. If you don't file taxes, it's you, a spouse you live with, and your children under 19 who live with you (some states use a higher age).

Tips and overtime count as income for the line and for the $580 test. The new federal deductions for tips and overtime come off after AGI, so they lower taxable income but not AGI, and Medicaid's MAGI starts from AGI. The guides to the tips deduction and the overtime deduction explain how those work. Pre-tax 401(k) contributions and pre-tax health premiums go the other way: MAGI leaves them out, so gross pay overstates it. The calculator uses gross pay, which is cautious for the line and a little generous for the $580 test. How pre-tax deductions affect a paycheck explains which ones lower taxable wages.

The calculator's weekly figures divide a month by 4.33. A month with five weekly paydays, or more workdays than usual, holds more shifts, so it can pass a line that an average month stays under. Even the lowest line, $1,835.40, is far above $580, so there's always a range of hours that meets the $580 test and stays under the line, unless your other household income alone passes it. To see what those hours pay after taxes, use the part-time paycheck calculator.

The 138% line is the expansion group's limit. Medicaid.gov's eligibility table (its latest, dated December 1, 2023) shows no adult expansion in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Georgia and Wisconsin cover some adults through waivers under their own income rules, and DC covers adults to a higher level (210% on that table), so this line isn't theirs. Minnesota and New York cover some adults above 138% through a Basic Health Program, which isn't Medicaid. If you get SSDI, its separate earnings test is in the SSDI income limit calculator.

Keep a record of your hours before your state asks

States have to check the data they already have, such as payroll records, before they ask you for anything. When that data comes up short, expect a request for pay stubs, timesheets, volunteer logs or school records. North Carolina's advice is plain: "Start keeping papers now."

A record you keep as you go is easier than one you rebuild later. The timesheet calculator totals a week from clock times, and the guide to proof of income with variable hours covers what to keep. If you work hourly shifts, ClockWage44 logs each day's start, end and break on a week grid, and its History screen lists each week's hours and gross pay, so you can add up a month's weeks and spot a short month while there's still time to pick up a shift.

What this calculator doesn't cover

• Exemptions: the page lists them, but your state decides who qualifies.
• State-specific income limits: waiver adults in Wisconsin and Georgia, DC's higher level, how a state rounds the line and when it adopts new guidelines. Minnesota's and New York's Basic Health Programs aren't Medicaid.
• The 2027 poverty guidelines. HHS usually publishes them in January, and this page uses 2026.
• Pre-tax deductions: the calculator uses gross pay.
• The seasonal-worker 6-month average, and the methods states use to predict income.
• The state option to turn income under $580 into hours.
• Self-employment: enter your net earnings per hour as your hourly pay.
• Paid vacation and sick hours: we found no federal answer on whether they count as work, so ask your state.
• Which months your state checks, and whether it started early.

Every figure here is an estimate, not tax or legal advice. Your state Medicaid agency decides whether you meet the requirement and whether you qualify.