By ADRIANNA LASKOWSKI
Minimum wage for New Jersey is set to be $15 an hour by year 2024. New Jersey will be the fourth state to raise the wage to a reasonable rate, Gov.Murphys said.
Raising the minimum wage was a major part of Murphy’s campaign, but he was unable to follow through in his first year in office due to disagreements with fellow lawmakers. The bill, which took over a month to be negotiated was signed Jan. 31.
A bill to raise New Jersey’s minimum wage to $15/hour was just sent to my desk from the Legislature. Over a million workers will now be able to envision their place in the middle class.
On Monday, I’ll sign this bill into law. Working families can’t wait.
— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) January 31, 2019
The current wage for New Jersey is $8.85 an hour. With the current bill passed, the wage will increase to $10 an hour by July 2019. There will be a $1 increase every year starting with $11 on Jan. 1, 2020 until it reaches $15 in 2024.
“No one working a full-time job should ever live in poverty,” Governor Phil Murphy said in a statement. “Putting the minimum wage on a clear and responsible path to $15 an hour is good for workers, good for our businesses and good for our economy. A higher minimum wage strengthens all of New Jersey.”
According to the NY Times, the bill includes exceptions for small businesses and seasonal workers of the state. Seasonal workers and small business employees, who have five workers or less, the minimum wage would reach $15 an hour by 2026. Farmworkers minimum wage would increase to $12.50 an hour by Jan. 1, 2024. After that, it is up a a special committee to decide whether to raise those workers’ minimum wage to $15 an hour.
The Effect
Although the increase of the wage is a great deal for workers, employers now have to figure out how to pay for the high minimum wage. Employers need to keep up with the state’s mandated wages and may have to cut back on employees or other necessities just to keep up.
“It is amazing that the wage will now be higher,” Jamie Vitale, a high school senior at Passaic County Tech. “I get out of school in June and will be starting my career, hopefully, but if not I can make sure I will be making a livable wage. I won’t be going to college but having the wage raised will help me financially.”
For small businesses it can be even harder. The $15 wage has been extended to 2026 as long as they have 5 workers of less. If they have any more than that, they may have to cut back on staff in order to meet the wages. Small business may even have to close due to not being able to have staff other than themselves.
“It’s going to be very hard to keep up with the wage. I try my best to give the employees a living wage but with having such a small business it is going to be tough,” said Maiken Stevenson, owner of Pawties, an online pet accessory store.
“We don’t have a storefront yet but just running the business out of the warehouse is tough enough, ” Stevenson added. “Now making sure my four employees meet the minimum wage and trying to get a storefront will be the goal. I will have to raid my prices but that’s the only solution I can see working.”
With the raise in wage, business owners will need to make ends meet. Prices will go up and it could be the same for big box companies. They will want to keep their profit the same if not larger when the wage increase finally hits. Once that happens, who knows what will happen.
This story is obviously very local as it talks about NJ’s minimum wage in particular. I think the angle of people who are figuring out how they are going to pay their workers with the hike in min. wage is interesting and thought-provoking. This piece offers different perspectives, coming from a soon-to-be worker and employer and how they perceive the raising wage. I also did not know about the exemptions for certain businesses and different rates for how the wage is going to be raised over time. Your subhead is a good divider from the information to the angles of those affected.