As the clock struck midnight last night millions of Americans received much needed automatic wage increases.
Minimum wage workers in over 20 states received raises today as laws were enacted overnight. While many of the states increased payments to adjust for inflation, which equates to merely a few cents, in all roughly three fifths of the states have a higher minimum wage that the federally mandated $7.25 per hour.
Although the most noticeable wage increases are over a dollar, of the 3.1 million workers receiving a bump next paycheck, economists believe the effects will be negligible for workers’ bottom lines.
“That’s going to be unnoticeable, really,” said Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “If you’re talking about an increase of a buck or two bucks, then maybe there’s some kind of noticeable effect.”
For example, even though New Jersey increased their minimum wage 13 cents to $8.38 an hour, in line with inflation, a study released by the New Jersey Police Perspective discovered that a “survival budget” for one person in the state required wages of at least $13.78 per hour.
“I think this issue is not going away until action is taken at the federal level, just because the federal minimum wage is so low compared to where it was historically and what it takes people to get by,” said David Cooper, analyst at the Economic Policy Institute.
In lieu of federal action to increase minimum wage (the last time pay was increased was in 2007), many states are taking matters into their own legislatures. Especially in the Northeast, many states have already passed laws pledging to surpass the $10.10 minimum wage goal in the upcoming years.
Connecticut plans to implement a statewide regulation of $10.10 an hour by 2017; Vermont is following suit with a law increasing minimum wage to $10.50 by 2018; and Massachusetts aims to lead all states in wages with an $11 mandate in 2017.
