State minimum wage increases will raise pay for 5.2 million workers on January 1: States with minimum wage increases effective January 1, 2019, by type of increase
|State||Share of workforce directly benefiting||Type of increase||New minimum wage as of Jan. 1, 2019||Amount of increase||Total workers directly benefiting||Total increase in annual wages||Average increase in annual earnings of year-round workers|
|South Dakota||1||1.58%||Inflation adjustment||$9.10||$0.25||6,000||$1,598,100||$270|
|New Jersey||1||1.72%||Inflation adjustment||$8.85||$0.25||67,300||$26,135,200||$390|
Notes: “Legislation” indicates that the new rate was established by the legislature. “Ballot measure” indicates the new rate was set by a ballot initiative passed by voters. “Inflation adjustment” indicates that the new rate was established by a formula, reflecting the change in prices over the preceding year.
Directly affected workers will see their wages rise because the new minimum wage rate exceeds their current hourly pay. This does not include additional workers who may receive a wage increase through “spillover” effects, as employers adjust overall pay scales.
In September 2018, the Michigan Legislature adopted, as legislation, a ballot initiative that was scheduled to be on the November ballot that would have raised the state minimum wage to $10.00 on January 1, 2019, with subsequent increases raising it to $12 by 2022 with automatic adjustment for inflation every year thereafter. By adopting the initiative, the legislature removed the measure from the ballot. After the November election, the legislature amended the legislation so that the minimum wage will reach $12 by 2030—eight years more slowly—with no further automatic inflation adjustments. As a result of the amended legislation, the increase to Michigan's minimum wage will take effect in April, not January 1.
The New York minimum wage changes take effect on December 31, 2018. Population growth between the data period and January 2019 estimated using state-specific projections for growth in the total population or the population ages 15—69, where available. Nominal wage growth between the data period and January 2019 estimated using the mid-point between national inflation as measured by the CPI-U from the first three quarters of 2017 to the first three quarters of 2018, and the 3-year average of nominal wage growth of the bottom 20 percent of wage earners in each state from 2014 to 2017. A full methodology is available in Appendix B of Raising the Minimum Wage to $15 by 2024 Would Lift Wages for 41 Million American Workers.
Source: EPI analysis of Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group microdata 2017 and state population projections from various state agencies and demography centers