It’s time for Pennsylvania to significantly raise its minimum wage, which, at $7.25 an hour, is dead last in the nation.

Legislation approved by the state House on June 20 would would raise the minimum wage to $11 per hour next January, with annual increases to $15 per hour by January 2026.

It also would set the tipped wage, currently $2.83 per hour, to 60% of the minimum wage. Tipped wages in the state haven't increased in nearly 30 years. The bill, now in the Senate’s lap, is tied to inflation, so we won’t have to wait for decades again before legislators consider future increases.

The Legislature last increased the state’s minimum wage in 2006. Every neighboring state has a higher wage floor. We are losing workers to other states, where they travel to make more money.

On average, a worker who earns minimum wage will earn only $15,000 per year. Rising costs across the board make it near impossible for workers to pay for basic necessities and may force them to rely on public assistance.

A higher minimum wage also could help nonprofits and organizations and businesses such as child care with recruitment and retention.

Locally and nationwide, outside child care providers have been struggling to retain staff due to low wages. A fast-food worker in West Virginia makes more than a child-care worker in that state.

“I think we need to increase our wages,” Alexandra “Ali” Feicht, of Ali’s Little Hands Learning Center in Center Township, told the Eagle last week. “To increase our wages, I would need help from the state or to increase my prices — which isn’t really helping the families.”

Pennsylvania parents earning the minimum wage or just above rarely can afford competent child care. That means they often “need to make difficult decisions — to trust their child to care of uncertain quality (or even safety) or not to work at all even though their family needs the income,” Diana Polson wrote in 2019 for the Keystone Research Center and Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center.

The bill has an uncertain path in the Republican-controlled Senate, whose members emphasize concerns for small businesses and rising costs associated with increasing the wage.

“I cannot support a bill that would put a local family restaurant out of business and, along with it, the many employees who make a living (there),” Rep. Kate Klunk, R-169th, said on the House floor last week.

Raising the minimum wage is pro-worker, pro-family, and there should be bipartisan agreement that those aims are good for the commonwealth and its future. Party leaders and Gov. Josh Shapiro must work to get this legislation across the finish line soon.

“This bill is long overdue,” Rep. Mike Sturla, D-96th, told his House colleagues last week. “This will move Pennsylvania forward in a manner that provides dignity for people who are willing to work.”

Our workers deserve better.

– JGG