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 breakdown by the National Employment Law Project.
Even though the federal minimum wage remains just $7.25 per hour, a majority of states now require employers to pay a higher rate. New Year’s Day is the most common time for states to implement scheduled increases to their minimum wages, thanks to cost-of-living adjustments written into state laws.
The highest state minimums will come to Washington State, at $17.13 per hour; New York, which will mandate $17 in the New York City metro area; and New Jersey, which will require $18.92 for long-term care workers.
The states raising their wage floors on Jan. 1:
- Arizona: $14.70 to $15.15
- California: $16.50 to $16.90
- Colorado: $14.81 to $15.16
- Connecticut: $16.35 to $16.94
- Hawaii: $14 to $16
- Maine: $14.65 to $15.10
- Michigan: $12.48 to $13.73
- Minnesota: $11.13 to $11.41
- Missouri: $13.75 to $15
- Montana: $10.55 to $10.85
- Nebraska: $13.50 to $15
- New Jersey: $15.49 to $15.92 (other rates apply to certain groups)
- New York: $16.50 to $17 in NYC metro; $15.50 to $16 upstate
- Ohio: $10.70 to $11
- Rhode Island: $15 to $16
- South Dakota: $11.50 to $11.85
- Vermont: $14.01 to $14.42
- Virginia: $12.41 to $12.77
- Washington State: $16.66 to $17.13
Alaska and Florida are scheduled to raise their wage floors later in 2026, to $14 and $15, respectively. Oregon will also hike its minimum wage next summer to a rate still to be determined.
As the federal wage floor has languished due to congressional gridlock, many states have taken it upon themselves to aggressively boost their own minimum wages ― often through ballot initiatives that put the question directly to voters, rather than lawmakers.
That strategy has been successful in several red states, including Nebraska and Missouri, where Republican politicians have been reluctant to raise the minimum wage due to business lobbying. Referendums on the minimum wage tend to pass easily due to their popularity even among conservative voters.
In many states, cities and counties are also allowed to set their own rates. In 2025, San Diego’s city council passed an ordinance that will move the minimum wage for hospitality workers to $25 per hour by 2030, while voters in Portland, Maine, approved raising the floor for all workers to $19 by 2028.
Many of the highest minimum wages in the country next year will be in California cities like Mountain View ($19.70), Richmond ($19.18) and Belmont ($18.95).
Yannet Lathrop, senior researcher at the National Employment Law Project, notes in an analysis 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.
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.