What Happened After Gravity Payments Announced $70,000 Pay

By a labor reporter covering private-company compensation claims
Last reviewed: July 10, 2026

Gravity Payments raised its salary floor from $70,000 to $80,000 in March 2022, a nominal increase of 14.3%. Inflation moved much faster. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ BLS-based CPI series rose from 236.222 in April 2015 to 333.979 in May 2026, meaning the original $70,000 announcement carried roughly the same purchasing power as $98,968 by May 2026.

By that measure, the current $80,000 floor is approximately 19.2% below the real value of the number that generated international attention in 2015. That does not erase the policy’s effects on lower-paid employees, but it changes what “raising the minimum” means eleven years later.

Gravity is a private payment-processing company rather than a public corporation with audited workforce disclosures. Its decade-long results therefore have to be reconstructed from company reports, contemporaneous journalism, federal price data and a named Harvard Business School teaching case.

The Gravity Payments pay timeline

Sources: Gravity Payments’ 10 Years Later: How a $70k Minimum Wage Changed Gravity Payments (2025), PBS NewsHour’s 2016 report, GeekWire’s 2020 pandemic coverage and Harvard Business School’s Gravity Payments: $70,000 Minimum Salary Company (2016).

2015: The announcement was a phased plan

The original policy did not instantly move every employee to $70,000. Gravity announced in April 2015 that the minimum would be introduced over three years, reaching the full level by 2017. Contemporary coverage said approximately 30 of the company’s 120 employees would eventually see their salaries double.

Gravity’s later account says much of the initial funding came from reducing then-CEO Dan Price’s annual salary from $1.1 million to $70,000. It also reports that the CEO-to-median-employee pay ratio was 22-to-1 in 2015.

The announcement created two separate questions that were often combined in coverage. The first was whether sharply raising the lowest salaries would improve workers’ financial security. The second was whether the business could absorb the expense without cutting staff, raising prices or failing.

Those are not identical tests.

2016: The early growth figures came from Gravity

PBS NewsHour revisited the company in September 2016 and reported that revenue had increased 75% and the number of new clients had risen 67% since the announcement. The report provided an independent journalistic platform, but the underlying business figures came from Gravity rather than public financial statements.

Harvard Business School also published Gravity Payments: $70,000 Minimum Salary Company on January 21, 2016. The case examined the compensation decision, employee reactions, client departures and a shareholder lawsuit surrounding the company.

Calling that publication a Harvard “study” can mislead readers. It is a business-school teaching case designed for analysis and classroom discussion, not a controlled economic experiment proving that the wage policy caused later revenue growth.

The distinction matters because publicity itself could produce new customers. Changes in the payments market, acquisitions, employee performance, pricing and the broader economy could also affect revenue.

2017: The policy expanded through acquisition

Gravity says it bought a Boise company in 2017 and brought 49 employees into its organization. Its 2025 retrospective says the transaction tripled the minimum salary for those workers. The company does not provide their individual pre-acquisition wages or a distribution showing how many received each size of increase.

This was an important expansion of the policy. The original announcement applied to an existing Seattle-centered workforce, while the Boise transaction tested whether a high salary floor could be carried into an acquired operation with a different local wage market.

It was also a business expansion. Any later increase in total headcount, revenue or customer count must account for the fact that Gravity added workers and operations through acquisition rather than organic hiring alone.

2020: The pandemic became the hardest stress test

Gravity’s merchant-processing revenue was closely tied to restaurants, hotels, retailers and other small businesses. In March 2020, GeekWire reported that monthly revenue had fallen nearly 55%, reducing the company’s expected cash runway to between three and six months. Gravity employed about 200 people at the time.

GeekWire reported that workers chose temporary salary reductions after company meetings, with as many as 12 employees initially offering to take no pay. The reductions and other savings reportedly extended the company’s runway to between nine and 11 months.

Gravity’s 2025 account gives more precise retrospective figures. It says 98% of employees participated, the average employee temporarily gave up $4,300, and the reduction represented roughly 20% of pay during the affected period. The company says revenue recovered sufficiently to repay the reductions by July 2020 and that no layoffs occurred.

This episode complicates the simpler version of the wage story. The high floor did not prevent a cash crisis, and employees temporarily financed part of the company’s survival through reduced pay. The policy’s practical success was that the reductions were repaid and jobs were preserved, based on the company’s account.

2022: The minimum rose, and leadership changed

Gravity increased its minimum salary to $80,000 in March 2022. Later that year, longtime operating executive Tammi Kroll became CEO after seven years overseeing day-to-day operations. Gravity’s current careers page continued to identify Kroll as CEO in July 2026.

The leadership change provides an overlooked test of the policy. The salary floor survived the departure of the executive most publicly associated with it.

Under the new leadership structure, Gravity also retained its remote-first model, retirement contribution policy and internal-promotion claims. The company’s careers page says 61% of current managers were promoted internally, although it does not disclose the size of the management group.

Institutional survival is stronger evidence than a founder’s promise. It shows that the compensation policy became part of company operations rather than remaining a one-person announcement.

2023 and 2024: Salary was supplemented by profit sharing

Gravity launched a profit-sharing program in 2023. The company says employees received $1,000 each during the first year and more than $8,000 each in 2024, before tenure-based additions.

The formula described in the 2025 retrospective multiplies annual company growth, which Gravity says is typically around 10%, by actual profit. That amount is divided among employees, with longer-tenured staff receiving percentage increases. Employees with four to six years reportedly receive an additional 10%, while those with seven to nine years receive another 20%.

Gravity consequently described its minimum 2024 total compensation as $88,000: an $80,000 salary plus an $8,000 profit-sharing payment. That phrasing combines two different forms of pay.

The $80,000 is the published floor. The additional payment depends on company performance and is not a guaranteed annual salary.

What the 2025 retrospective claims

Gravity’s named report, 10 Years Later: How a $70k Minimum Wage Changed Gravity Payments, presents the company’s fullest account of the policy. It reports that revenue rose 650%, headcount roughly doubled to more than 200 full-time employees, applications increased tenfold, and revenue per employee doubled.

The company also says employee turnover fell from 22% to 6%, the customer base doubled, and customers now stay more than twice as long as the industry average. It reports that more than one-third of the 120 employees working there in 2015 remained employed in 2025.

Employee financial behavior changed as well, according to Gravity. Average annual retirement contributions reportedly increased from $1,900 to $6,700, while participation rose from 62% to 84%. The company contributes 3% of employee pay regardless of whether the worker contributes personally.

These are unusually detailed disclosures for a private employer. They are not audited workforce statistics.

Gravity does not publish its annual revenue series, payroll register, employee-level tenure data, turnover formula, customer-count denominator or retirement-plan records. The report also acknowledges that multiple factors contributed to growth, even while arguing that the wage policy played a large role.

Where the success claim goes too far

The timeline establishes several facts with reasonable confidence: the company remained in business, expanded beyond its original workforce, preserved the salary floor through a leadership transition, increased the nominal minimum to $80,000 and added profit sharing. Current company materials continue to present the policy as active.

The public record does not establish causation.

There is no comparable payment processor that followed Gravity’s exact business path while keeping its former pay structure. There is no independently audited year-by-year dataset separating wage effects from acquisitions, publicity, market growth, product changes, remote work or management decisions.

The early 75% revenue-growth figure, the later 650% figure and the turnover decline all originate with Gravity. PBS and other outlets reported some of those claims, but publication by a news organization does not turn company-supplied numbers into independently audited results.

My assessment is narrower than Gravity’s own conclusion: the salary policy was financially survivable for this company and coincided with substantial reported business growth. Public data cannot determine how much of that growth the policy caused.

Inflation has quietly changed the headline

The nominal salary floor rose from $70,000 to $80,000, an increase of $10,000 or 14.3%. Consumer prices rose by approximately 41.4% between April 2015 and May 2026 using the seasonally adjusted CPI-U series published by BLS through FRED.

Applying that price change makes the April 2015 figure equivalent to approximately $98,968 in May 2026 dollars. The current $80,000 minimum is roughly $18,968 below that inflation-adjusted benchmark.

Calculation uses the April 2015 CPI-U level of 236.222 and May 2026 level of 333.979. CPI measures average price changes and does not reproduce the spending pattern or local living costs of an individual Gravity employee.

This is the largest gap in the anniversary narrative. Gravity raised the nominal floor, but it did not preserve the original $70,000 policy’s national purchasing power through May 2026.

FAQ

Does Gravity Payments still have a $70,000 minimum salary?

No. Gravity says it increased the minimum to $80,000 in March 2022. Its current materials continue to describe the higher-pay policy as part of company operations.

Was every employee immediately paid $70,000 in 2015?

No. The original announcement described a phased increase intended to reach the full minimum by 2017. Approximately 30 of 120 employees were expected to have their salaries doubled during the process.

Did Harvard prove that Gravity’s policy worked?

Harvard Business School published Gravity Payments: $70,000 Minimum Salary Company in 2016. It was a teaching case examining the decision and its complications, not a controlled causal study.

Did Gravity Payments lay off workers during the pandemic?

Gravity says it avoided layoffs after employees accepted temporary salary reductions in 2020. GeekWire reported that revenue had fallen nearly 55% and that the company employed about 200 people at the time.

How much did workers temporarily give up in 2020?

Gravity’s retrospective says 98% of employees participated and the average employee gave up $4,300, or roughly 20% of pay during the temporary reduction. The company says those amounts were repaid by July 2020.

Does the company pay more than $80,000 through profit sharing?

It did in 2024. Gravity reports an employee profit-sharing payment exceeding $8,000 that year, producing minimum total compensation above $88,000. Future payments depend on growth and profit.

What would the original $70,000 wage equal in 2026?

Using the BLS CPI-U index for April 2015 and May 2026, it equals approximately $98,968 in May 2026 purchasing power. The figure is a national inflation adjustment, not a city-specific cost-of-living estimate.

Gravity’s experiment did not collapse, and the company reports stronger retention, revenue and employee finances after the policy began. The harder finding is less celebratory: the present $80,000 floor has not kept pace with the purchasing power of the number announced in 2015.