Ohio’s rate will rise 15 cents to $8.30 an hour

Ohio’s minimum wage will rise 15 cents to $8.30 per hour starting Jan. 1, putting it more than $1 above the federal rate.

For tipped employees, the new wage will go from $4.08 per hour to $4.15, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce.

Under a constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2006, Ohio’s minimum wage rises each year by the rate of inflation, which was 1.9 percent from September 2016 to August 2017.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, a rate that has not changed since 2009.

Nineteen states currently have minimum wages higher than $8.30 per hour, including Michigan, where the rate is $8.90.

The Ohio minimum wage remains at $7.25 per hour for companies with annual gross receipts of $305,000 or less, and for 14- and 15-year-olds.

The 15 cent increase is the largest in Ohio since January 2015. In 2016 and 2017, the minimum wage rose by a total of just 5 cents.

Since the amendment passed, the largest year-toyear increase in Ohio was 30 cents in both in 2009 and 2012.

There has been a movement in Cleveland to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 per hour. Ohio lawmakers in December passed a bill prohibiting cities from setting their own minimum wage rates, but a Franklin County judge struck it down in June as a violation of the state Constitution’s singlesubject rule.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said in late June that he planned to raise the minimum wage for city-paid workers to $15 an hour by next spring. It would impact an estimated 500 employees.