Minimum Wage | Introduction
No one who works full-time should live in poverty. Annual inflation adjustments have allowed Washington’s low wage workers to maintain their buying power through both good economic times and bad. The January 2008 raise to $8.07 just allows Washington to retain its position of having the nation’s highest statewide minimum wage. At the same time, Washington’s job growth is far out-pacing the national average.
With passage of a November 1998 statewide initiative, Washington became the first state to index minimum wage to inflation. Since then, a majority of states have increased their minimum wage above the federal level, and at least nine other states have added annual inflation adjustments to their minimum wages.
Today a full-time worker earning minimum wage in Washington earns about $16,000 annually - $4,000 more than workers in states with the federal minimum wage. Those added wages are plowed right back into the local economy. At the same time, annual cost of living adjustments provide employers with predictability. Employers know well in advance the amount of the modest annual increases, rather than facing occasional big jumps that result from a partisan political process.
Not only are Washington’s low-wage workers doing well with our strong minimum wage, but so is our state economy. Over the last year, jobs in Washington increased more than three times faster than in the nation as a whole. Jobs rose in both retail and restaurants, the two largest employers of minimum wage workers.
Washington is joined by Oregon, at $7.95 an hour, and California, at $8.00 an hour, as states which have the best minimum wages in the country. In 2007, the federal minimum wage rose (finally!) for the first time in 10 years to $5.85 per hour. It will increase in two more steps to $7.25 in July 2009.