In January 2024, Pennsylvania’s elected executives, legislators, and judges saw their pay increase 3.5% thanks to a 1995 law that requires Pennsylvania government salaries be tied to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a measure of inflation. This raise occurs yearly unless it is frozen by lawmakers. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania’s minimum wage has stagnated at $7.25 per hour since 2009, suppressing the earnings of over a million other Pennsylvania workers in low-paying jobs.
In June 2023, Pennsylvania’s Democratic-held House of Representatives passed House Bill 1500, a bill that would raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2026. Proponents noted that the bill is really a copy of the minimum wage bill (Senate Bill 743) from State Senator Dan Laughlin, a Republican who introduced a bill with the same minimum wage increase schedule. H.B. 1500 aimed to raise Pennsylvania’s tipped minimum wage to 60% of the minimum and put the minimum wage on a schedule to increase to $11 per hour on January 1, 2024, $13 on January 1, 2025, and $15 on January 1, 2026, indexed to inflation afterwards. H.B. 1500 is noted as a companion bill to S.B. 743. By the close of 2023, the Pennsylvania Senate did not hold a floor vote for S.B. 743 or advance any minimum wage legislation.
The minimum wage is an essential labor standard, one that was established to guarantee a fair wage for the lowest paid workers in this country. The declining value of the minimum wage contributes to the growth in income inequality and widens pay disparities by gender and race. In this report, we outline the demographic characteristics of Pennsylvania workers who would benefit from a minimum wage of $15 per hour in 2026.
The Keystone Research Center also released COUNTY and LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT fact sheets, to show how many Pennsylvania workers would benefit from a $15 per hour minimum wage by 2026.
Summary Estimates
We estimate that 1.34 million Pennsylvania workers would be affected by a $15 minimum wage. Almost 776,000 would be directly affected, and more than 568,000 would be indirectly affected. Directly affected workers are those who would be earning less than $15 per hour when the wage change took effect, while indirectly affected workers are those who earn slightly more than $15 per hour, but projections show these indirectly affected workers would see a slight wage increase as pay scales are adjusted upward with a $15 minimum wage. With a $15 minimum wage in 2026, over 21% of Pennsylvania’s workforce would see their wages rise.
The average affected worker would see a $2 per hour raise for full-time, year-round work. In all, Pennsylvania workers would see over a $5 billion increase in yearly wages, a significant economic stimulus for workers whose wages are legislatively suppressed by a minimum wage floor that is lower than in any other state in our region.
READ THE FULL REPORT BELOW (DOWNLOAD PDF HERE)