Connecticut’s hourly minimum wage will increase from $16.94 to $17.48 on Jan. 1, the fourth annual adjustment since the state pegged future increases to the federal employment cost index, state officials said Wednesday.
The announcement comes a month earlier than in the three previous years, a change that allowed Gov. Ned Lamont to break the news at a press conference outside a supermarket six days before the Democratic primary for governor.
“It is absolutely coincidental,” said Danté Bartolomeo, the commissioner of labor.
Passage of the minimum wage law came in 2019, the governor’s first year in office. It increased the hourly minimum from $10.10 to $15 in five annual increments of about $1, then defaulted to an annual adjustment calculated by the state DOL.
The law states that the commissioner “shall announce the adjustment” on Oct. 15th of every year, pegged to changes in the employment cost index for wages and salaries for all civilian workers over the year ending on June 30.
Bartolomeo has treated Oct. 15 as the deadline, not the date on which the announcement shall be made. Last year, the Lamont administration announced it on Sept. 3, two days after the Labor Day weekend.
“This is a $21.60 increase per week for workers that are working 40 hours. It’s a 3.2% increase that will help mitigate the costs of inflation, keep wage gaps from widening and promote a steady, stable economy,” she said.
“Talk about affordability,” Lamont said. “Pay the essential workers a little more. They deserve it.”
The first bump from the 2019 law came in 2020, when COVID made low-wage service workers in day care centers, food stores and other places essential in the governor’s view.
The adjustment was announced outside the Big Y supermarket in West Hartford, a locale that spoke to how quickly the minimum wage stopped being a point of contention between retailers and labor.
In 2019, Wayne Pesce of the Connecticut Food Association opposed the original bill, which would have jumped the minimum from $10.10 to $15 in just three years, then peg increases to the consumer price index.
He asked for a six-year phase-in and opposed indexing. The legislature and governor opted for five years — and indexing, albeit one more sensitive to wage increases, not consumer prices.
On Wednesday, Pesce was at Big Y to greet the governor, as were executives of the supermarket chain. There were no complaints about the coming increase.
“It’s settled business,” said Pesce, president of the trade group.
Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, a labor organizer elected in 2018 and named co-chair of the Labor and Public Employees Committee, said the indexing was key, providing a degree of stability for low-wage workers who often went years waiting for the minimum wage to change.
“The governor was totally on board, had campaigned on this issue, as well as the House. We had a trifecta,” Kushner said, a reference to Democrats holding the governor’s office and both chambers of the General Assembly. “We knew we could get this done. But what we did that was so critically important is that we indexed this so that we wouldn’t get stuck again.”
Washington state’s $17.13 minimum wage is the highest across-the-board state wage, but it, too, will be rising on Jan. 1. It pegs its increases to the consumer price index, typically announcing the adjustments in September.
California has a $20 minimum wage for workers at national fast-food chains.
