Voters in both Missouri and Arkansas backed hiking their state’s minimum wage through measures on Tuesday’s midterm election ballots, becoming the ninth and 10th states to raise their minimum wages via ballot initiative in the last three election cycles.
In Missouri, Proposition B prevailed, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and will incrementally raise the state minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2023, up from its current level of $7.85. The federal minimum is $7.25.
In Arkansas, voters approved Issue 5, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette projected, to raise the wage floor to $11 an hour by 2021, up from the current level of $8.50.
“Despite the rosy picture being painted by many politicians, voters are saying ‘enough’ to an economy that’s leaving too many struggling families behind,” said Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of The Fairness Project, which backed the measures in both states.
Polling had been scant in each state, but the support for increases surprised few as wage hikes have proved popular in most other states where they have reached the ballot. Business groups opposed to the hikes, arguing they would be hard for small businesses to absorb, glumly concluded off the record that proponents would likely win.
“It’s a triumph for out-of-state activist groups that funded both campaigns, but a loss for the small business owners and young adults who will face the consequences of these wage hikes,” said Samantha Summers, spokeswoman for the free market Employment Policies Institute, which opposed the hikes.
Summers argued that the grassroots strength for the increases wasn’t quite as strong as it appeared, pointing to state election commission filings. EPI estimated that Arkansas for a Fair Wage, the main coalition group backing the hike in that state, got 99 percent of its funding, about $1.5 million, from out-of-state liberal groups. Raise Up Missouri, the main pro-wage hike coalition group in that state, got 78 percent of its funding, about $5 million, from out-of-state groups.
Pro-minimum wage activists have directed their efforts at the state and local level for the last several election cycles following years of inactivity on the issue in Congress. More than half of all states require employers in all cases to pay more than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour, with states like California, New York, and Massachusetts setting theirs on the path to eventually phase into $15.
Increases on just two state ballots in 2018 nevertheless indicates the higher minimum wage movement may be reaching the saturation point, having already won in most of the states where it had the strongest political support. Increases were on the ballots of four states each in 2016 and 2014. Most increases in recent years have come through state legislatures.
