(The Center Square) – Nearly 400,000 Ohioans are expected to benefit from a new minimum wage after voters tied the pay to inflation nearly two decades ago.
The state’s minimum wage jumped Jan. 1 to $10.45 for nontipped employees and to $5.25 an hour for tipped employees for businesses with annual gross receipts of more than $385,000.
Last year’s minimum wage in Ohio was $10.10 for nontipped and $5.05 for tipped.
In 2006, Ohio voters approved an amendment that ties the state’s minimum wage to the inflation rate.
“Next month’s adjustment is thanks to Ohio voters, who tied our state’s minimum wage to inflation when they raised it in 2006,” Policy Matters Economist Michael Shields said. “That protects Ohio’s lowest-paid workers from losing buying power as prices rise. After a year when inflation reached 40-year highs, this adjustment will protect wages for nearly half a million Ohio workers.”
The Economic Policy Institute estimates more than 150,000 people will see the direct wage increase and believes 238,100 more who are paid a little above the new rate will likely get a boost as pay scales are adjusted.
It also estimated two-thirds of those impacted will be more than 20 years old and nearly 270,000 children live in households that will get an increase.
“If Congress had placed a similar inflation safeguard when it passed the highest minimum wage on record, way back in 1968, the federal minimum wage would be worth over $14 per hour today,” Shields said. “Without it, the wage has been cut in half, and minimum-wage workers take home half the pay their grandparents did two generations ago.”
