UNITED STATES - FEBRUARY 25: Activists with Our Revolution hold $15 minimum wage signs outside the Capitol complex on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021, to call on Congress to pass the $15 federal minimum wage hike proposed as part of the COVID relief bill. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Pennsylvania’s minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. It’s the lowest minimum wage compared to all of the commonwealth’s neighboring states.
Twenty-one states across the country raised their minimum wage once the new year began on Wednesday, but Pennsylvania wasn’t included on that list.
Pennsylvanians have not experienced an increase in the minimum wage since the federal government raised it to $7.25 an hour in 2009.
Democratic lawmakers gathered in Lancaster on Tuesday decrying the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s failure to raise the minimum wage over the past 15 years.
“As a new year approaches, Pennsylvania will start again behind our neighboring states. Our minimum wage is stuck at a dismally low $7.25 per hour,” Senator-elect Patty Kim (D-Dauphin) said in a statement.
“We are sending a terrible message that we don’t value our workers in Pennsylvania. I think of the single-mom working late shifts to pay for the rising cost of rent or the grandparent working on their feet all day because they cannot afford retirement. This year, let’s catch up with our neighbors like Maryland, Ohio and West Virginia and raise our minimum wage, too.”
Pennsylvania House Democrats passed House Bill 1500 in June 2023, which would have raised the state’s minimum wage in three stages to $15 an hour by Jan. 1, 2026 and index it to inflation by Jan. 1, 2027.
However, Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate failed to take up the HB 1500 by the end of last year’s legislative session, meaning both chambers will have to restart the process to raise the minimum wage after the upcoming legislative session that starts next week.
New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Ohio, all of which border Pennsylvania, were included on the list of states that raised their minimum wage on Wednesday.
New York has the highest minimum wage at $16.50 an hour out of Pennsylvania’s neighboring states, followed by New Jersey at $15.49 an hour, Delaware and Maryland at $15 an hour, Ohio at $10.70 an hour and West Virginia $8.75 an hour.
“Working families are struggling to get by right now, and they deserve a government that is on their side,” Rep. Ismail Smith-Wade-El (D-Lancaster) said in a statement.
“Let’s raise the wage, and tell our neighbors that we see them, that we see the value of their labor.”
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