SACRAMENTO >> Minimum wage workers are on track to receive a pay increase in January, another step in the plan to pay $15 per hour by 2023.
Last year, the state Legislature passed the minimum wage bill, SB 3, and the first increases took effect in January of this year.
Currently, businesses with 26 or more employees pay minimum wage workers $10.50 per hour. Businesses with fewer than 26 employees pay $10 per hour. Those figures will jump to $11 and 10.50 respectively come Jan. 1, 2018.
But that raise is not set in stone.
So-called “off-ramps” were part of the bill to give the governor a way out if the economy did not support potential wage increases. Each July, ahead of the next planned increase in minimum wage, a review of the state’s budget and economic conditions is to take place — the first such review would begin this month.
The Jan. 1 pay increase could be suspended if the review finds:
• The state has a projected deficit of more than 1 percent of the general fund revenue in the current fiscal year;
• sales tax revenue for the past year is down from the year before; or
• job growth is negative for the previous three or six months.
H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the Department of Finance, said it appears the next increases will occur.
“Barring any unforeseen and dramatic change in the data, staff advise that nothing at this point would suggest that the next step would not go forward,” Palmer said in an email to the Times-Standard on Monday.
According to the June budget deal, there isn’t a projected deficit until the 2019-20 budget year. Sales tax revenue has increased, according to the preliminary figures available to the state. And the June job growth report released on Friday showed a slight increase in nonfarm jobs.
All three factors bode well for minimum wage earners who are now about five months away from a pay raise.
There are also scheduled increases in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, until wages reach $15 per hour for minimum wage workers.
