The new year brought pay hikes for hundreds of thousands of workers, with a record number of cities, counties and states raising their hourly wage minimums – many of them hitting or surpassing $15 an hour.
On January 1, 2022, the minimum wage rose in 21 states and 35 cities and counties, with that hourly floor hitting or surpassing $15 in 33 of those jurisdictions, according to the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for low-wage and unemployed workers.
Additional states and localities will follow suit later in the year – 17 of them to $15 or more, according to NELP. All told, 25 states and 56 municipalities will raise their minimum wage over the course of 2022, a record high of 81 jurisdictions.
The higher wages come amid worker shortages and ongoing activism on the labor front.
Those who received pay increases on January 1 included workers previously earning at least $12 an hour in three states: Arizona (which hiked its base rate to $12.80 from $12.15), Colorado (where the minimum rose to $12.56 from $12.32) and Maine (where it’s now $12.75, an increase of 50 cents).
In Delaware and Illinois, the hourly base rose to $10.50 and $12, respectively.
Minimum wage earners in Ohio and South Dakota received hourly increases of 50 cents, boosting the rate in the former to $9.30 and the latter to $9.95.
The minimum wage in Connecticut will go up a dollar to $14 an hour as of July 1, 2022. In addition, the minimum wage of $10 an hour in Florida will see a $1 hourly increase on September 30, 2022.
By contrast, 20 states have not raised their minimum wages above the federal level for more than a decade, with that minimum at $7.25 an hour since 2009.
