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Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Time to Raise New York City’s Trailing Minimum Wage? - The New York Times

New York’s minimum wage has fallen behind that of other cities, making the city even more unaffordable for low-paid workers. Also, a new soccer stadium may be going up in Queens.

Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll look at what has happened to the $15 minimum wage in New York City. We’ll also get a preview of plans for a 25,000-seat stadium for the city’s Major League Soccer team.

New York City’s $15 minimum wage, a trailblazer a few years ago, now trails other cities, a reality that has made higher prices all the more painful for workers. Minimum-wage earners would have to work a total of 111 hours to afford the monthly rent on a one-bedroom apartment, according to a survey released last month by United Way of the National Capital Area. That’s two weeks and almost four days — more than half a month — at 40 hours a week, well above the standard yardstick for how much someone should spend on housing. I asked Patrick McGeehan, who covers the New York economy, to discuss the minimum wage picture in New York.

The $15 minimum wage seemed almost ahead of its time when it took effect nearly four years ago. What happened?

Back in 2016, New York became one of the first states to put its minimum wage on a path to $15 an hour. It set a schedule of annual increases that brought New York City’s minimum wage for most workers to $15 at the end of 2018.

But that’s as far as the state law went, so it’s still at $15.

Meanwhile, other cities that indexed their minimum wages to account for...



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