Nineteen states will raise their minimum wages to ring in the new year for 2026, with most of them reaching a rate of $15 per hour or higher.
Another 49 cities and counties across the country will also be hiking their wage floors on Jan. 1, according to a that many of the 2026 increases are a legacy of the Fight for $15, a union-backed campaign that began in the fast-food sector more than a decade ago. Twenty states are on their way to a $15 minimum wage if they haven’t reached it already.
“Policies increasing the minimum wage have been a lifeline for underpaid workers who have been the most impacted by a growing affordability crisis,” Lathrop argues.
But there’s been no significant movement at the federal level for years, and the likelihood of an increase while Republicans control the White House and Congress is close to zero.
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Earlier this year, GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri co-sponsored a bill with a Democrat to raise the federal floor to $15 per hour, a rare position for a Senate Republican. “Right now, the federal minimum wage, if you index it for inflation, or relative to inflation, it’s the lowest level since the 1940s,” Hawley told HuffPost at the time.
Most Democrats have already moved beyond the $15 marker and support a hike to $17, arguing that inflation has eroded workers’ spending power too much. In April, the Senate voted on an amendment to a budget resolution proposing a federal rate of $17, but it failed 47 to 52. Hawley was the only Republican who voted in support of it.
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