Tuesday’s elections was good news for workers in Maine, Colorado, Washington, and Arizona. Voters approved measures to raise their state’s minimum wage. The need for a national $15 an hour minimum wage is quickly becoming irrelevant, with most states setting higher minimums than the U.S. anyways.
Colorado will also give workers a sizable raise, incrementally increasing the minimum wage from $8.31 to $12 by 2020. Workers in Maine will see their pay increase from $7.50 to $12 by 2020. The minimum wage for tipped workers there will also increase to $5 an hour, with $1 increase until their earnings equal the general minimum wage by 2024.
Arizona workers’ pay increased from $8.05 to $12 by 2020, Arizona will also provide workers with sick leave: 40 hours annually for those at large companies, 24 hours for those at smaller businesses, and guaranteeing one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked.
In Washington workers received a pay increase from $9.47 to $13.50 by 2020, and employers will now be required to provide them with one hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked.
Some states have already made progress. Voters in Alaska and Arkansas passed minimum wage-raising ballot initiatives in 2014. Arkansas voted that state’s minimum wage to $8 an hour in 2016 and $8.50 in 2017. With Arkansas’s low cost of living, $8 actually translates into the equivalent of $10.26 in California and $10.47 in New Jersey.
Most are concerned that the increase will lead to less lower-income jobs. There’s strong evidence that small increases in the minimum wage doesn’t hurt employment. Economist argue that the increase will stimulate the economy by increase American workers spending power. The Congressional Budget Office sees a small decline in jobs, a big increase in disposable income for those at the bottom, and minimal inflationary effect from those at the top.
Still, the new increases aren’t as great as those seen in some major cities. Washington, D.C., Seattle, San Francisco and New York City have passed ballot measures to raise the minimum wage to $15. State governors in California and New York just signed $15 minimum wage bills into law in April. Several cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, have their own $15 minimum wage laws in place as well.
Raising the minimum wage is genuinely popular. A survey of 73% of Americans by the Pew Foundation said they supported an increase from the current $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. The president-elect told CNN in May he might be “open to doing something” about the minimum wage, though that statement reversed his earlier claims that wages were too high across the country. This sets him apart from many in the Republican party, who overwhelmingly do not support raising the minimum wage.
The results of Tuesday’s vote expand the pay gap with the 21 states where workers are covered by the $7.50-an-hour federal minimum wage. Half the nation’s workforce are still covered by the federal minimum wage. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, and was set in 2009.