Precisely two weeks ago, fifteen U.S. cities, states and counties raised their minimum wages in what the Wall Street Journal refers to as a mid-year burst that reflects legislative momentum to boost pay floors around the nation even as federal legislation stalls. The two states raising their respective minimum wages were Maryland and Oregon.
On July first, Maryland’s minimum wage rose from eight dollars and twenty five cents to eight dollars and seventy five cents per hour. Oregon’s minimum wage now stands at nine dollars and seventy five cents per hour for non-rural businesses. The federal minimum wage remains at seven dollars and twenty five cents per hour, and has remained at that level since two thousand and nine.
In the absence of federal action, communities across the nation have been busily ratcheting up their local minimum wages, with some cities and states embracing increases that reach as high as fifteen dollars per hour.
San Francisco, where the minimum wage is now thirteen dollars per hour, will reach the fifteen dollar threshold by twenty eighteen. In Washington, D.C., the mayor of the nation’s capital recently signed legislation that will raise that city’s minimum wage to fifteen dollars per hour by twenty twenty.
