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Federal Wage Garnishment Limits for Ordinary Debt: DOL Fact Sheet #30
DOL Fact Sheet #30 caps garnishment for an ordinary debt at 25% of disposable earnings or the amount above 30x minimum wage, whichever is less.
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Updated: Sources: 1
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What matters now
- Federal law caps wage garnishment for ordinary debt at 25% of disposable earnings or the amount above 30x minimum wage, whichever is less.
- At the $7.25 federal minimum wage, that floor is $217.50 a week or $435.00 every two weeks.
- Disposable earnings means pay left after legally required deductions, not gross or take-home pay.
- If state law would garnish a smaller amount, the lower state amount applies instead of the federal formula.
- The CCPA bars firing an employee over garnishment for a single debt, no matter how many levies are filed to collect it.
If a court order is garnishing your wages for an ordinary debt — not child support, alimony, bankruptcy, or a tax debt — the U.S. Department of Labor’s Fact Sheet #30, revised in “December 2024” (DOL Fact Sheet #30), sets a federal ceiling on how much of one paycheck can be withheld: the lesser of 25% of your disposable earnings or the amount by which your disposable earnings exceed 30 times the federal minimum wage. At the current $7.25 federal minimum wage, that threshold works out to $217.50 a week or $435.00 every two weeks.
This original record-reading guide is a general reading aid, not cited evidence. It does not depict a source record; the article text and source links provide the facts.
Key points
- The federal cap under the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA) is “25% of the employee’s disposable earnings, or the amount by which an employee’s disposable earnings are greater than 30 times the federal minimum wage” — whichever is less (DOL Fact Sheet #30).
- “Disposable earnings” is a specific, defined term: “the amount of earnings left after legally required deductions are made” (DOL Fact Sheet #30).
- Weekly disposable earnings of “$217.50 or less: NONE” can be garnished, while at “$290.00 or more: MAXIMUM 25%” applies (DOL Fact Sheet #30).
- The same pattern holds biweekly: “$435.00 or less: NONE” and “$580.00 or more: MAXIMUM 25%” (DOL Fact Sheet #30).
- If your state’s garnishment law would take a smaller amount than the federal rule, the state rule wins, and you cannot be fired over a single debt’s garnishment.
Federal garnishment ceiling
Fact Sheet #30, last revised in “December 2024” (DOL Fact Sheet #30), states that under the CCPA the maximum amount of an employee’s earnings that may be garnished in any one workweek or pay period is the lesser of “25% of the employee’s disposable earnings, or the amount by which an employee’s disposable earnings are greater than 30 times the federal minimum wage” (DOL Fact Sheet #30). This is a two-part test, and only the smaller of the two resulting numbers is the garnishable amount for that pay period.
What counts as “disposable earnings”
The 25% figure and the 30x-minimum-wage figure are both calculated on “disposable earnings,” which the fact sheet defines as “the amount of earnings left after legally required deductions are made” (DOL Fact Sheet #30) — not gross pay, and not take-home pay after every voluntary deduction, but earnings net of the deductions the law requires.
Federal wage thresholds
Because the second part of the test is tied to 30 times the federal minimum wage, the fact sheet’s table translates the formula into dollar figures at the current $7.25 federal minimum wage. On a weekly basis, “$217.50 or less: NONE” of disposable earnings may be garnished, and “$290.00 or more: MAXIMUM 25%” applies once earnings clear that level (DOL Fact Sheet #30). On a biweekly basis, the same structure appears at double the dollar amounts: “$435.00 or less: NONE” and “$580.00 or more: MAXIMUM 25%” (DOL Fact Sheet #30).
The state-law tie-break rule
The CCPA’s federal limits are not the only rule that can apply. The fact sheet states its own tie-break: “If a state wage garnishment law differs from the wage garnishment provisions of the CCPA, the law resulting in the lower amount of earnings being garnished must be observed” (DOL Fact Sheet #30). In other words, whichever rule — federal or state — protects more of the paycheck is the one that controls.
Garnishment retaliation protection
The fact sheet also states an anti-retaliation rule tied to a single debt: “The CCPA prohibits an employer from firing an employee whose earnings are subject to garnishment for any one debt, regardless of the number of levies made or proceedings brought to collect that one debt” (DOL Fact Sheet #30).
What this article does not answer
This article covers only the CCPA’s federal limits as Fact Sheet #30 states them for an ordinary debt. The fact sheet itself says a different, higher ceiling applies to court orders for child support or alimony, without stating that ceiling’s figure in the passage covered here. It also states plainly that “these limitations do not apply to certain bankruptcy court orders, or to debts due for federal or state taxes” (DOL Fact Sheet #30) — so a garnishment tied to a bankruptcy proceeding or a federal or state tax debt is governed by different rules entirely and is not addressed here. This article also does not state any specific state’s own garnishment-law figures — only the fact sheet’s own rule that the lower of the federal or state amount applies — and it does not evaluate whether any individual reader’s garnishment order is valid or was calculated correctly; that depends on facts and records outside this fact sheet.