Millions of workers benefitted from minimum wage increases on January 1.
The Economic Policy Institute reports Nineteen states will raise their minimum wages.
- More than 8.3 million workers will get a raise starting January 1 as 19 states raise their minimum wages.
- For the first time, there will be more workers in states with a $15 or greater minimum wage than in states with the federal minimum of $7.25.
- Minimum wage increases are critical for improving affordability. State and federal policymakers should ensure wage floors meet the needs of all workers.
- Women make up the majority (58.1%) of affected workers.
- Black and Hispanic workers will disproportionately benefit. 10.7% of affected workers are Black, despite being 8.7% of the workforce in these states. Meanwhile, 38.3% of affected workers are Hispanic, despite being 19.8% of the overall workforce in these states.
- The vast majority (87.4%) of affected workers are adults, not teenagers.
- A quarter (25.3%) of affected workers are parents. 4.8 million children live in households with at least one worker receiving a pay increase.
- Nearly half (49.4%) are full-time workers and 41.4% have at least some college education.
- More than one in five (21.0%) affected workers have household incomes below the poverty line and 48.8% are within 200% of the poverty line.
But What Does It Mean?
To those impacted, the results may be significant. But to the economy as a whole, these hikes are essentially meaningless.
“Nineteen states will increase their minimum wages on January 1, boosting earnings for more than 8.3 million workers by a total of $5 billion.”
Personal Income and Real Personal Income
Personal Income Details
- Personal Income: $26.4 Trillion
- DPI Disposable Personal Income (After Taxes): $23.1 Trillion
- Real DPI (inflation adjusted) $18.0 Trillion
- Real PI Minus PCTR: $17.7 Trillion
- Real DPI Minus PCTR: $14.1 Trillion
What Is PCTR?
PCTR stands for personal current transfer receipts, money from the government for which no current services have been performed.
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Disability payments, and SNAP (food stamps) are key examples.
You may feel like you earned your SS payment and I won’t argue. But no current services (work) by you are involved.
On January 22, 2026, I noted Real Spending Has Exceeded Real Income for Seven Straight Months
Real personal income peaked in April of 2025. Spending continues unabated.
Income is not keeping up with spending.
See the above post for more details.
Regardless, an increase of $5 billion with personal income at $26.4 trillion is not going to impact the economy at all.
Yet, the boost is important to many of those 8.3 million workers getting the pay hikes.
Inflation will eat the wage increase?
Easy
So I did some simple math based on the numbers Mish stated, $5B total across 8.3M workers.
$602.40 per year. Per person.
$11 per week.
28 cents an hour.
Now, my assumption was that those people worked full-time.
Still, seems like an irrelevancy.
The K-shaped economy marches on.
When are the taxpayers going to see an across the board paycut for the dc mafia who continue to be a drag on fiscal responsibilty, common sense and reasoning.
What it means is that goods prices and services will continue to rise. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
$7.25/hr. after taxes (FICA & Medicare) barely buys you a bag of potato chips.
Slavery was supposedly outlawed by the 13th Amendment.
Mish, do you have any statistics on how many people are actually being paid minimum wage where it is still $7.25 per hour? That would be an interesting number to know. My area has a low minimum wage but most people won’t work for that so the market is determining the real minimum wage.
AI: As of 2024, approximately 82,000 workers in the United States earned exactly the federal minimum wage of \(\$7.25\) per hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024). When including workers earning below this rate (which may include tipped employees or exemptions), the total is roughly 1.1% of all hourly-paid workers.
The percentage of hourly workers earning the federal minimum or less has decreased from 13.4% in 1979 to around 1.1% in 2023.
that is a bunk number. nobody knows. but what i do know is i payed many mexican men and women in AZ for many years. depending on skill levels the fed minimum wage was higher than many scum bags payed them. i always payed well. usually in silver, too. also i lived for decades deep in immigrant hoods in brooklyn. same shit. sorry mish, it’s all bullshit. i do love your blog and at least you have a backbone to stand up and speak out against the amerikan nazi party and their gestapo. crumbling evil empire 101
This is why the minimum wage should be increased to $200/hr for everyone. Problems all solved! /s
The uniparty strikes again. We now know the Blue team wants more freedom for women’s bodies AND gun rights against an abusive authoritarian police state. Not sure what more of a difference there is. but those are large. The Red team is really vile. The worst of the worst of human primates.
Both parties have extremists ruining the Country for everyone.
Oh yeah that Biden what an extremist 🙄
Democrats at the top of the party are as middle of the road as it gets. If AOC is the extreme left in America, that’s pathetic, because she sounds like a middle of the road moderate in Europe
The whatabout bullshit is just that: bullshit. Exactly one us party has devolved into fascism, foreign expansionism, and gunning people down in the streets.
The top of the Democrat party are mostly old decrepit men and women who are so out of it that their staffers and junior members have effective control of the party.
another cult member. i keep blocking you dougie and you keep popping up. you dumb.
genocide joe and his famine. a shining star. he voted for every war the past 50 years in senate………..you cannot be serious. it’s a uniparty of warmongers. the blue and red pom pom girls are so idiotic. i will give you that Trump has gone full Hitler cult and has a gestapo. but Obama and biden had gestapos to round up people. they just did it quietly. trump likes to make a big show of it and make people nuts but shooting at people………..crumbling evil empire 101
nope. both have assholes that keep voting for the blue and red uniparty of war mongering imperial assholes. 98%. the 2% who vote for libertarian and greens vote for peace and prosperity. look in the mirror and 98% of amerikans will see the problem. hat tip plato republic. of course the modern amerikans especially the boomers have no ability to do this.
Current US Constitutional protections you no longer enjoy:
1st amendment – you can be categorized as a domestic terrorist for video recording an ICE “investigation “ or protesting against the government
2nd amendment – you can be killed simply for carrying a permitted firearm
4th amendment – your home can be entered without a warrant
6th amendment – you can be detained without due process
This is active federal policy.
It’s shocking to me that not everyone seems to care. You can make the argument that if any of these amendments are not enforced, that the entire Constitution is essentially null and void.
Wouldn’t mind if some of that trickled up to us. In CT, our teacher pay grades haven’t changed in a dozen years, but minimum wages have. Soon there will be similar pay for burger flippers and new teachers. Its already challenging to find people willing to become teachers. But to tell them they’ll have to eke it out for 12 years before they can get a competitive salary [assuming there’s no pay freeze along the way] is a pill too hard to swallow for many.
in nys and ca they bankrupt the homeowners who pay for the lush benefits and salaries. in SC and AZ it was a fair wage. the 4 states i’ve called home for long periods and payed many r/e taxes as a small time landlord with 25 or so doors
The public simply is telling teachers to knock off the BLM, DEI, LGBTQ+ nonsense in the classroom. The tax base is also seriously eroded from Biden’s immigrant pipeline. And Gov Lemont keeps chasing away taxpayers, like myself, with family leave taxes. When I lost my job in CT 2 years I had many on-site interviews locally, but a Red state company came through with the first offer. I didn’t think twice about leaving CT and their taxaholic government. Maybe you should consider leaving CT too.
It has nothing to do with that. That’s your own crazy take on it.
In CT teacher pay grades are negotiated district by district. So I’m not clear what you’re talking about. If your district is lagging behind, you should get involved in the contract negotiating arm of your local union. This year my wife’s salary bumped from $85k to $100k after contract negotiations. Considering Cadillac insurance benefits for the entire family are part of the package, this is nothing like fast food wages, especially because most minimum wage workers don’t get a full 40 or benefits.
Town by Town you will find wide variance in pay steps. But overall CT teaching jobs are not paid like fast food.
you are honest. and smart.
Do you see how much a plumber or electrician makes these days?
It makes a big difference whether they own their own company or work for somebody. Young guys are struggling as ever. But yeah, trades have done well since the pandemic. I don’t envy them; it’s hard work.
An increase in wages without a corresponding increase in productivity is by definition inflationary.
nope. it is not. inflation is monetary. the us gov increasing debt and currency is inflation. not some wage somewhere in economy.
Higher wages are not inflationary?
That is the same as saying higher prices for the same product are not inflationary.
the free shit army is the only branch of our empire that keeps on winning. of course the top of the free shit army are the flag officers of wall street and MIC, boardrooms. SS and medicare…….is a rounding error in destruction of this empire. sending money in a circle jerk among generations is one thing. sending trillions to iraq and afghanistan and hundreds of bases around the globe is quite different. all the free shit army. though.
If you at the Trumptard table and can’t figure out who MAGA Billy is; it’s you.
Many of those people getting more in pay will find themselves getting less, or not qualifying at all for, Federal tax credits or Medicaid.
States get more income tax until consumers start to decrease spending.
And we’ve seen how minimum wage increase for franchise restaurants in California resulted in layoffs and job losses.
So why don’t we all make peanuts and make America great again.
These states either don’t have a minimum or it is below the federal minimum: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma and Wyoming. I’d consider living in the more urbanized sections of Georgia. I wonder why this so strongly correlates with the old Confederacy?
way cheaper wage paid in immigrant hoods in brooklyn or mexican hoods in phoenix. lived in both for many years. ti’s all bullshit like most things out of the us empire government…….stats.
The South is more Libertarian than the other sections. They are business-friendly in many of their laws.
horse shit. lived in the deep south of SC for a decade. they are on the government teat even more than most yankee states.
Libertarian often means horseshit wages. I am not a Libertarian like Mish. I think it’s bullshit. Maybe you do too.
Your minimum wage ‘fact’ is not relevant to real life.
Any state with a minimum wage of zero or textually less than the federal minimum wage must meet the federal minimum wage regardless. This applies to all businesses held accountable under the Fair Labor Standards Act – which employ like 90% of all workers in the US.
What Mish’s article is referring to are those states increasing their minimum wage above the low federal minimum.
Minimum Wages rose to an unsustainable level is the impact. How one can justify paying a worker $40,000.00 Per Year, to place a wrapped up burger and a scoop of fries into a bag, along with a cup of soda, and pass it through a window to an awaiting human being, is way beyond my comprehension.
How you can justify this, to ALL the workers making far less, and doing far more work is even more of a surprise, and we wonder why we can’t find help to do those jobs?
This is just silly stupid, but not as bad as paying 100K for an education, that will pay you slightly more than minimum wage, which is what the fast food workers are making after dropping out of high school…
Insanity at a very high level, and what’s that say about our intelligent levels when doing such?
Here’s Stu trying to make sense of the modern world again, lol
If an economic activity is not profitable enough to afford paying the labor it relies on well enough to survive, then it should not exist.
– If an economic activity is not profitable enough to justify paying the labor involved enough to survive on, then it should not exist. > Say goodbye to a massive amount of jobs then, as they will not, and in some cases are already not paying enough to live on.
– Why should anyone trade their limited time on earth with corporations that keep them in poverty? If you want my time, you will pay me for it, and fairly. That means enough that I can take some kind of enjoyment from life, not that I will live on the edge of starvation. > I think you miss the point of minimum wage jobs. They are not, and never were meant as a standard of living for somebody. They are and we’re meant as an entry point into the work force. Typically at an earlier age (I worked from 14 on, and was paid cash by many of those jobs). To learn how to deal with the Public, run a cash register, handle all sorts of task and learn how to be a worker bee so to speak.
>> So an entry level job has now demanded living wage money, and that works in what sort of society? One I want no part of. I prefer one based upon MERIT and not minimum wages explosions to compensate for unskilled laborers to make a living from…
“you miss the point of minimum wage jobs. They are not, and never were meant as a standard of living for somebody.”
Who cares what they were meant to be, it’s 2026 and we’re living in the here and now. Nobody cares about your Kodachrome memories of the 1950s when you were a soda jerk or whatever and you didn’t have to share a water fountain with the darkies.
hahaha. exactly
– Who cares what they were meant to be, it’s 2026. Because we still need them, and Corporations still need them, and at the entry level pay they are meant to receive. We have a shortage in experienced workers for this very reason.
– Nobody cares about your memories of the 1950s when you were a soda jerk or whatever. > Not sure what that means, but I do know that high level pay for low skill work, is a recipe for disaster. It will be after your workforce is entirely garbage, you’ll be left scratching your head on why nothing ever gets done, anywhere, anymore, and zero solutions are left for your Country.
– you didn’t have to share a water fountain with the darkies. > You appear racist, which is a shame. I wish you would take some time to reflect on your weakness.
Lol Stu you’re so dense 😂
My state has just about the highest standard of living in the nation, and just about the highest minimum wage too. They must have postponed the disaster here!
– and just about the highest minimum wage too. They must have postponed the disaster here!
> Wow, you must be so proud, you’re working at the Top of the Minimum Wage! Good For YOU!! I think you are the disaster by the looks of things, wherever minimum wage is the highest in the Country. Bronze Star!!!
Now you’re drunk 😂
In the much lauded service sector economy we have advanced to, most jobs out there are not rocket science and are nothing more than entry level jobs. If our whole economy is mostly entry level jobs, you are going to have most working below their station. Look how many mundane careers our economy produces having so many doing nothing more than simple tasks their whole career. People who work have to make enough to survive whatever their station is.
– most jobs out there are not rocket science and are nothing more than entry level jobs. > If we pay them $40,000.00 per year, then what’s a real job worth? $100,000.00 per year? What companies can sustain this level of pay, and stay in business? How much do you make off of a burger and fries? Sustainable enough to pay people $40K – $50K per year? I hardly think that’s sustainable myself, but maybe I’m wrong?
– If our whole economy is mostly entry level jobs. > We need a new business model then!
– People who work have to make enough to survive whatever their station is. > Do they now? Where do all the workers work, when all these companies go out of business for overpaying wages, and not making enough money to stay in business?
If someone can’t afford to be in business they need to go get a job.
Stu,
Phil is a troll. Best not to feed him, and make use of the Hide feature to hide his comments.
It can work if your clientele doesn’t mind paying $49 for a hotdog. They exist but are rare.
Exactly, and it’s why a trip to McDonalds now cost you $10-$15 for that bag being passed through the window to you (@ $20ph)!>it works until it doesn’t, and that’s happening now…
Looking at what kind of companies are on the DOW tells us all we need to know.
In and Out hamburger joint is privately owned and has paid their workers over $20 an hour for years. Their product is better, costs equal or less than their competitors, no ordering kiosks, and the place is always packed.
It sounds like the do nothing shareholders are the biggest part of the problem. They increase costs without any input. This is more inflationary than increased labor costs needed for employees to survive.
In and out pays what McDonald’s and others pay on average ($18-$22), depending upon location of course.
Where they differentiate is in management pay. They are compensated quite well.
They are mad always have been a family owned private company as well, and that also plays a role.
Share holders do add more complexity, and take away some of the independence a private company enjoys if utilized.
In fact, it’s precisely why Chik-Fil -A is and will always will be a private family owned company. They are fantastic imo as well!
McDonald’s is gross Stu, although I’m aware you’re a man of “simple” tastes!
I’m blessed to live in an area with tons of great choices for takeout. My go to is a rice or salad bowl at the Mexican joint around the corner, $12 for a huge bowl of whole food- greens, sauteed veggies, beans, tomatoes, salsa, chicken or carnitas… I have no idea if the McDonald’s business model is suffering because of the minimum wage in my state, but all the ones I’m aware of are still in business. But in a state with the best pizza in the nation and just a huge assortment of cuisines, anytime you end up at a chain you have to ask yourself where you failed.
I find the idea of worrying about the state of McDonald’s to be hilarious.
Just replace human labor with robots. Problem solved.
Federal minimum wage should be set with adjustments for local municipal area cost-of-living and tied to a reasonable guage of inflation. (This is already done for various federal salaries etc etc).
There should be no minimum wage set by the government. There are jobs waiting to be created if the government got out of the way and allowed the market to set the minimum wage.
And “market” here means ordinary people seeking jobs and employers who have created jobs. If ordinary people are too dumb to negotiate their wages with their employer, they’ll have to learn.
We’ve all become too domesticated and are not exercise agency in our own lives. We need to be “re-wilded” and allow ourselves to re-wild. As “The Civil Rights Lawyer” on YT always ends his videos, “Freedom is scary. Deal with it.”
Your last sentence betrays one of the core constituencies of the federal minimum wage: unions and other organized labor groups who set their rates for all that “skilled labor” they perform based off the federal minimum wage.
TD