Effective Jan. 31, Pennsylvania has raised the minimum wage for commonwealth employees to $15 per hour.
Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order in March 2016 to raise the minimum wage to $10.15 per hour for employees under his jurisdiction. He amended the order in July 2018 to increase pay to no less than $12 an hour, with provisions to raise the wage by 50 cents a year until reaching at least $15 an hour in 2024. Wolf amended the order to accelerate that timeline, effective Jan. 31.
“I am committed to supporting workers, creating family-sustaining jobs and ensuring that, in Pennsylvania, hard work is rewarded fairly,” said Wolf. “In 2018, I made a promise to our state workers, to ensure that they are fairly compensated for their service to our commonwealth.
“Increases in the minimum wage raise employee morale, productivity and work quality, while lowering turnover and training costs. Accelerating the increase to $15 will better align worker salaries with the current cost of living, while providing even greater cost and efficiency savings for state government.”
Wolf is also renewing his call for the Republican-controlled General Assembly to raise the minimum wage for all workers in Pennsylvania.
“Pennsylvanians deserve to be paid fairly for their work, but for too many Pennsylvanians, fair pay is just a dream because of Pennsylvania’s embarrassingly low minimum wage,” he said. “The fact that Pennsylvania’s minimum wage hasn’t increased in 13 years is an embarrassment. It’s an insult to hardworking Pennsylvanians who are doing the same amount of work but finding that their paychecks cover less and less every single year.”
