Nearly one million workers will see their pay increase in January due to scheduled increases in the minimum wage, according to a release by the National Employment Law Project. These workers in in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington will have their hourly pay rise by between 10 and 35 cents per hour, “resulting in an extra $190 to $510 per year for the average directly-affected worker,” NELP found. This table shows the increases in each state:
If the federal minimum wage had kept up with inflation since the 1960s, it would be over $10 today, a far cry from the current $7.25. And as the Economic Policy Institute noted, “Based on current projections of inflation growth over the next ten years, the federal minimum wage will lose nearly 20 percent of its purchasing power by 2022, equaling $5.99 in today’s dollars.”
Nearly one in four American workers is expected to be in a low-wage job over the next decade (which doesn’t just harm the individual worker, but is detrimental to the workers’ children). Raising the minimum wage would especially benefit women, as “women comprise 54.5 percent of workers who would be affected by a potential minimum-wage increase.”