State budget includes agreement for higher minimum wage

Going to $15 per hour in upstate in 2024, then 50-cent hikes in 2025, ’26

Press Release, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Office 

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced that the FY 2024 Budget agreement includes a transformative plan to help low-wage New Yorkers keep up with the rising cost of living by increasing New York’s minimum wage for three years and then tying future increases to inflation.

On January 1, 2024, the minimum wage will increase to $16 in New York City and the counties of Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester, and to $15 in all other parts of the State. In 2025 and 2026, the minimum wage will increase by an additional $0.50 in each year, after which the State’s minimum wage would increase at a rate determined by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) for the Northeast Region — the best regional measure of inflation. Raising New York’s minimum wage to keep pace with inflation will benefit hundreds of thousands of minimum wage workers across the state.

“In the face of steadily rising costs and inflation, this historic plan to overhaul New York’s minimum wage will ensure that the wages of those hit hardest by the affordability crisis – including women, single mothers, and people of color – keep pace with the cost of living,” Hochul said. “This is a win for workers and for businesses: indexing the minimum wage to inflation will help hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers maintain their purchasing power, contribute to the state economy, and support our small business community.”

Following three years of set growth in 2024, 2025, and 2026, beginning January 1, 2027, New York State will increase its minimum wage by the three-year moving average of the CPI-W for the Northeast Region. An “off-ramp” is available in the event of certain economic or budget conditions.

Indexing the minimum wage to inflation will help to maintain the purchasing power of workers’ wages from year to year. And increasing the minimum wage would overwhelmingly benefit low-income workers, particularly women and people of color who comprise a disproportionate share of minimum wage workers.

Eighteen other states either currently tie their minimum wage to inflation or some other economic formula or are slated to do so, including three states which have minimum wages at or above $15 in 2023. Economic research shows that raising the minimum wage can lead to reductions in poverty, reduced social assistance spending, stimulative spending, improved worker productivity, and other benefits.