2023 Brings Minimal Wage Will increase in 23 States

Low-wage employees in 23 states rang within the new 12 months with the promise of larger paychecks forward due to widespread will increase within the minimal wage.

The pay hikes, starting from 23 cents an hour in Michigan to $1.50 an hour in Nebraska, will profit 8.4 million employees, in response to a current estimate by the Financial Coverage Institute, a progressive suppose tank. Alternatively, many states nonetheless successfully have a minimal wage no larger than the federal minimal of $7.25 an hour, both as a result of they haven’t any minimal wage or it’s set at or beneath the bottom wage allowed by federal legislation. The beneath map exhibits the place minimal wages stand, and the way they modified when 2023 arrived.

For years, progressive politicians and organizations have sought to enhance the federal minimal wage above its present stage. As advocates have identified, somebody working 40 hours per week on the minimal wage would earn simply $15,080 a 12 months, properly beneath the federal poverty stage of $27,750 for a household of 4. Democrats tried to boost the wage in 2021 as a part of a pandemic aid invoice, however the effort ran aground within the narrowly-divided Senate. Within the meantime, many states have taken issues into their very own palms.

Along with the statewide will increase, 27 cities and counties across the nation are additionally boosting their minimal wages, the EPI calculated. A few of this 12 months’s will increase have been the results of pandemic-era laws, whereas others have been automated changes from older legal guidelines. On high of the will increase that took impact with the brand new 12 months, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., Florida, Nevada, and Oregon are set to extend their minimal wages later within the 12 months.

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