A decade after the first push for the $15 Now campaign, minimum wage in Seattle will reach the $20 mark.
The city’s Office of Labor Standards announced the coming milestone this week as it released the updates to the city’s minimum based on the rate of inflation in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the Seattle Tacoma Bellevue area.
- The 2024 minimum wage for large employers (501 or more employees) is $19.97/hour
- The 2024 minimum wage for small employers(500 or fewer employees) who do not pay at least $2.72/hour toward the employee’s medical benefits and/or where the employee does not earn at least $2.72/ hour in tips is $19.97/hour.
- The 2024 minimum wage for small employers who do pay at least $2.72/hour toward the employee’s medical benefits and/or where the employee does earn at least $2.72/hour in tips is $17.25/hour.
“Seattle has one of the nation’s highest minimum wages – a clear commitment to creating a city where working people can live and thrive,” Mayor Bruce Harrell said in the announcement about the near 7% jump. “We will continue to advance policies and programs that support working people and ensure Seattle remains a bastion for workers’ rights.”
In 2014, the city imposed the new higher wage law championed by Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant and embraced by then-Mayor Ed Murray, which called for increasing pay rates gradually with different levels for large and small employers, and for employers who provide some other kinds of compensation for their workers. In 2015, CHS looked at the first wave of large employers reaching the $15 minimum wage mark.
Seattle’s current 2023 minimum wage is $18.69/hour for large employers and for small employers “who do not pay at least $2.19/hour toward the employee’s medical benefits and/or where the employee does not earn at least $2.19/ hour in tips,” OLS says. Small employers who do pay $2.19/hour in medical benefits and/ or where the employee earns at least $2.19/hour in tips currently pay $16.50/hour.
For Sawant, the minimum wage battle was a major victory as she tackled three major initiatives set in the first days of her time on the council — a 15 minimum wage, Tax Amazon, and, rent control in Seattle. The push for a tax on the city’s largest employers took shape in the following years and now the JumpStart tax has become a vital element of the city’s budget.
With the socialist representative opting to step down after a decade on the council to shift her focus to the creation of a new national political party, time has apparently run out for the third initiative. CHS reported in August as Sawant’s final bid to push rent control forward in the city fell short.
Candidates Joy Hollingsworth and Alex Hudson are now vying for Sawant’s soon to be vacated seat on the council.
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Hope everybody likes $10 beer.
Beer is already $10. Sorry that people who work need to pay their bills. Maybe you should drink at home, like the people struggling to pay their bills/rent on min wage in Seattle have to do?
And $25 cocktails.
Go after the landlords and their outrageous prices and not the paying people to live.
Just an FYI – landlords aren’t developers, for the most part.
I’m glad I’m not on a fixed Social Security income yet – once I hit that age I guess it’ll be off to Ephrata or cheaper locations well outside of Seattle if I want to survive the higher wages that increase the cost-of-living far faster than SS COLA’s will ever keep up with.
PS – tax increases get passed on to renters, too (and I’ve been lucky enough to have spent almost 40 years as a Seattle renter who had the kind of small time landlords the City Council seems hell bent on driving out of business).
Yeah I would play a violin for those small time landlords except the ones I’m thinking of that own most of the commercial buildings are rich and still making plenty of money off their rentals so get outta here with this.
KMA, scooter.
Lol, really, that’s your intelligent reply? Seems like I cut you deep, sorry I don’t like your pals the rich landlords that kill small businesses.
The few commercial landlords I know cut deals to small businesses, and you have no idea what you’re talking about, my callow dude.
PS – I would suggest you take your self-righteous pitchfork of ignorance and put it….well….you know where.
Go look up historical GDP vs median household income. Then lookup historical inflation vs median household income.
It’s not the $10 beer that’s the problem, it’s that we as a society are not reaping the benefits of a productive economy enough to be able to afford the $10 beer.
$20/hr will only be halfway to the poverty line in King County. They can just work a second 40 hour shift, right?
Now if you want to be depressed, go look up the estimated amounts of money the 1% have offshored thanks to deep tax cuts just for them and compare it to our national debt.
Seattle is now more expensive than Paris and Switzerland without any of the quality.
It’s really shocking and sad. It used to be a sleepy town at the corner of the country where no one really cared about us (and we were relatively happy and content)… it was a good deal.
Now I cannot wait to move somewhere else after I retire.