Low-wage workers get a pay hike in 2018
18 states and 20 cities will boost their minimum wage in the new year
The movement to lift earnings of low-paid workers will gather force in 2018, with a growing number of states and cities raising their minimum wages as high as $15 an hour. Proponents say the initiatives can help narrow a widening income gap between the wealthy and poor. Business advocates say they’re already leading to restaurant closings and layoffs. On or about Jan. 1, 18 states and 20 cities, including many in California, will hike their base pay because of laws or ballot initiatives that mandate gradual raises over several years, or automatic cost-of-living increases. Later in the year, another three states and 18 cities and counties will boost their pay floors, according to the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group. Twelve of the states and many cities are set for relatively large increases as part of a multiyear phase-in, while nine states are rolling out smaller costof-living bumps. The pay hikes have been linked, at least in part, to nationwide fast-food worker demonstrations and demands for a $15 wage since 2012. Those pleas were initially deemed far-fetched. But now California, New York and more than a dozen cities are moving toward that standard by 2022 in a wave that will cover one in five U.S. workers. For example, the pay floor is set to rise from $9 to $10 in Maine and from $11 to $13 for large employers in New York City. In Florida, by contrast, an inflation-indexed rise will nudge base pay from $8.10 to $8.25. (Many states and localities have lower base wages for tipped employees, such as waiters.) A few months ago, Sarah Delte, a part-time cashier at a Jack in the Box in San Jose, got a raise from $12 an hour to $13.25 in anticipation of a city-mandated minimum wage increase to $13.50 on Jan. 1. “I’m able to get my son Christmas presents (and a new pair of shoes), but I’m not able to save,” says Delte, 37, who also receives a rent subsidy and food stamps. She says a $15 wage would allow her to begin socking away some money.
“I’m able to get my son Christmas presents (and a new pair of shoes), but I’m not able to save.” Sarah Delte, 37 Part-time cashier at a Jack in the Box who recently got a raise from $12 an hour to $13.25
Some cities are pushing the envelope. In Silicon Valley, both Mountain View and Sunnyvale will lift their pay floors from $13 to $15 an hour on Jan. 1, joining Seattle (for large employers who don’t provide benefits) at that benchmark. San Francisco and New York City (for firms with more than 11 employees) will join the $15 club later in the year. That full-time minimum wage worker in New York now earning
$22,000 a year would see his or her salary leap to $30,000, assuming two weeks of vacation.
Meanwhile, four states — Colorado, Hawaii, Maine and Rhode Island — will boost their minimums to $10 or slightly more on New Year’s Day, with Maryland taking that step July 1. They’ll join eight states already at or above that level — Arizona, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. “The raises that workers have been fighting for the last five years are finally arriving in paychecks,” says Paul Sonn, NELP’s general counsel. “They’re starting to get to a more meaningful level.”
States and localities have acted as Republicans in Congress have blocked efforts to raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour in recent years. As a result, 29 states, with 60% of the U.S. workforce, now have pay floors that are above the federal government’s.
Sixteen states plan campaigns in
2018 to lift base pay even higher through legislation or the ballot. There are proposals for $15 an hour in 10 states, including Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey.