North Dakota Prevailing Wage

No. The U.S. Department of Labor's table of state prevailing wage contract thresholds lists no threshold for North Dakota and groups it with the states that have no prevailing wage law. The North Dakota Century Code has no prevailing wage chapter: Title 34, Labor and Employment, runs from General Provisions through Minimum Wages and Hours, Child Labor and Wage Collection without one, and chapter 48-01.2, Public Improvement Bids and Contracts, covers thresholds, advertising, bonds and payment and has no wage section. The state Department of Labor and Human Rights' wage and hour page lists wage claims, youth employment, independent contractor verification and licensing, and says nothing about prevailing wage or certified payroll. There is no state rate schedule to look up for a 2026 North Dakota job.

A repeal year circulates online for North Dakota. The federal threshold table carries no note beside North Dakota, unlike Idaho (repealed 1985) or Kansas (repealed 1987), and we found nothing in the Century Code to support a year, so we do not print one. For a bid it does not matter which way the history went: there are no state rates and no state certified payroll statute either way.

Not state ones. If someone hands you a North Dakota prevailing wage rate sheet for a 2026 job, it is almost certainly a federal Davis-Bacon wage determination, a rate written into the contract by the awarding agency, or a collective bargaining agreement rate you signed. Those are all real obligations. None of them is a state prevailing wage determination, because North Dakota does not issue any. On NDDOT work, the handbook says the highway wage decision is posted on its labor compliance page by published date, and the decision incorporated into your contract is the one you pay.

Yes, and this is the part that matters most. Davis-Bacon applies on its own federal authority to contracts in excess of $2,000 for construction, alteration, or repair, including painting and decorating, of public buildings or public works, and the Related Acts extend prevailing wage requirements to construction that federal agencies assist through grants, loans, loan guarantees and insurance. Section IV of Form FHWA-1273, the federal-aid contract provisions the handbook says every federally funded NDDOT contract and subcontract carries, is applicable to all Federal-aid construction projects exceeding $2,000 and to all related subcontracts and lower-tier subcontracts regardless of subcontract size. NDDOT's handbook adds that if a non-federally-funded project is tied to a federally funded project, the entire contract is considered federally funded and is subject to Davis-Bacon, with weekly certified payrolls for all portions of it.

Not for NDDOT. Its handbook says, in its own words, that weekly certified payrolls are not required by NDDOT for employees working on state funded only contracts, and are generally not required for employees working at locations considered not to be the site of the work of a federally funded highway construction contract. Read the contract anyway. A city or county can write reporting into its specifications, and that binds you as a contract term even with no statute behind it.

In LCPtracker, and only there. NDDOT's contract special provision on mandatory automated certified payroll says all contractors on NDDOT federal-aid projects, including city and county projects, must file weekly certified payrolls, that NDDOT requires the use of LCPtracker, and that certified payrolls in paper form will no longer be accepted. After award the prime designates a Prime Approver, the Civil Rights Division sets up that account, and the prime assigns its subcontractors to the project in LCPtracker; a subcontractor that is not on NDDOT's Approved Subcontractor List or Qualified Contractor List has to register and be placed on one before it can be entered. Logins come from the Civil Rights Division at 701-328-2605 or 701-328-2576.

The handbook says payrolls and compliance statements are due within seven calendar days after the regular payment date of the payroll period, which is the same trigger the federal regulation uses, within 7 days after the regular payment date (29 CFR 3.4(a)). Then comes the step people miss: until the prime contractor reviews and electronically approves the payrolls of itself and its subcontractors through the Prime Approver account, they are not viewable by the Project Engineer and, in the special provision's words, not deemed submitted to the NDDOT. A subcontractor's payroll sitting unapproved is a late payroll.

The handbook lists it: the employee's full name and an individual identifying number such as the last four digits of the Social Security number, which LCPtracker takes as XXX-XX-last 4; the correct job classification or classifications; the hourly wage rates, regular and overtime, and the fringe benefit totals paid into plans or the hourly rate paid in cash, or both where the fringe is mixed; the daily and weekly hours worked in each classification including actual overtime hours; total earnings; itemized deductions per employee; and the actual or net wages paid. A telephone number is encouraged, not required. Addresses and Social Security numbers are kept by the contractor and provided on request to NDDOT, USDOL, FHWA or the prime, and the handbook says complete Social Security numbers should never be placed on paper payrolls.

There is no paper one. The handbook says that for LCPtracker to accept payrolls, the contractor must set up an E-Signature on LCPtracker and must certify each payroll electronically, and that the electronic signature is the equivalent of a pen and ink signature. The certification is the familiar three-part statement: the weekly payroll contains the information required and is correct and complete; the persons employed on the contract have been paid the full weekly wages earned without rebate and with no deductions other than the permissible ones; and each employee has been paid not less than the applicable wage rate and fringe benefits, or cash equivalent, for the classification of work performed under the wage decision incorporated into the contract.

Overtime on the basic rate of pay, which under the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act is the straight time hourly rate, cannot be less than the basic hourly rate in the Davis-Bacon decision, and is the rate actually paid when that is higher; fringe contributions and cash fringe are excluded from the overtime computation. Fringe is owed on all regular and overtime hours and is not calculated at time and a half: the handbook's example is 50 hours at the base plus fringe and 10 hours at half the base. When an employee works two classifications in a week the contractor may use the basic rate in effect when the overtime hours were worked or a weighted average, and the handbook's own two-classification example uses the weighted average. Where an employee works two or more separately awarded contracts under different districts, cities, counties or consultants, NDDOT strongly recommends the rate in effect, and a weighted average has to be explained, with every calculation, in LCPtracker's comments on the certification page. Davis-Bacon hours and commercial hours in the same week go on two separate weekly payrolls.

The handbook says all payroll records must be maintained and preserved by the contractor for three years following the completion and final acceptance of the project, available at the request of FHWA, USDOL and NDDOT at any time during that period, and that all records in LCPtracker will be retained by NDDOT for the required statutory period. Keep your own set regardless: the handbook puts the burden of proof on the prime and its subcontractors and says a failure to keep accurate records may cause NDDOT to find for the complainant in a wage dispute.

We produce the certified payroll records you hand in on federally funded North Dakota work. Enter hours by day and classification and we calculate straight time, overtime on the base rate, the fringe credit and cash in lieu, then generate the Rev. January 2025 federal WH-347 with its Statement of Compliance. The wage check flags pay below the rate you entered for a classification before you certify, and Lydia, our AI assistant, explains each flag. To be straight with you: NDDOT takes certified payroll only inside LCPtracker, and we are not an LCPtracker payroll interface. The LCPtracker CSV we export is a flat table of the week's figures, not LCPtracker's own upload template, so on NDDOT work you key the payroll into LCPtracker yourself and certify it there, and our WH-347 is the record you keep. On federally assisted housing, water, sewer, airport and building work, where the funding agency or the prime takes a WH-347, we produce exactly what they ask for. You file with the agency either way; we do not submit anything to any agency on your behalf.