As inflation has surged, other cities have vaulted past New York’s $15 minimum wage, considered a trailblazer only a few years ago.
When New York City’s minimum wage first reached $15 nearly four years ago, New York was at the forefront of the movement to raise living standards for workers in the fast-food industry and other low-paying sectors. But in recent months, as the costs of rent, groceries and utilities have surged, the minimum wage in a growing list of cities, including Washington, Los Angeles and Denver, has vaulted past.
New York, unlike those cities, did not link its minimum wage to the rate of inflation. As the cost of living rises across the country, workers earning the lowest wages in the nation’s biggest city are seeing their incomes steadily reduced in real terms.
Since New York raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour for most workers at the end of 2018, the buying power of that wage has fallen by about 15 percent, according to James A. Parrott, director for economic and fiscal policy at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School. Those workers have effectively been set back four years to the days when their minimum wage was $13 an hour, he said.
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