New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday he would push for a $15-an-hour minimum wage in the city, which would tie it for the highest rate in the nation.
“The current minimum wage proposal simply doesn’t do enough to help New York City. That’s why we will fight to raise New York City’s minimum wage to more than $13 per hour in 2016 … while indexing the minimum wage [to the inflation rate], which would bring us to a projected $15 per hour by 2019,” the mayor said in his annual state of the city address.
New York state has an $8.75-an-hour minimum wage and will raise it to $9 an hour next year. De Blasio has lobbied the state legislature to allow the city to have a higher wage, arguing that the current rate is not sufficient for poor families. Gov. Andrew Cuomo is sympathetic, having proposed legislation last month that would raise the city’s rate to $11.50 an hour and $10.50 for the rest of the state.
A study last year by the city’s comptroller’s office said that raising the rate to $13.13 would affect 1.2 million New York City residents, adding about $100 a week to their pay. Overall, that would increase labor costs for city businesses by $6 billion annually. “Such businesses [would] adjust costs through some combination of higher prices, lower profits and increased efficiency,” the study found.
“It’s difficult to overstate the positive impact this would have on working New Yorkers. Even for those that earn more than minimum right now, this action would create an upward pull on wages … an upward pull on opportunity … and an upward pull on our economy,” de Blasio said.
The Greater New York Chamber of Commerce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The mayor has pushed for the $15 rate for several months. In September, he signed an executive order raising the minimum wage to $13.13 for workers employed by businesses in buildings developed with more than $1 million in city subsidies. The raise, which expanded an existing regulation, affected an estimated 18,000 workers.
Several cities have acted to raise their minimum wage, with San Francisco and Seattle having approved the highest rates nationally at $15 an hour. Both cities are phasing the increase over the next three to four years.
