By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh

As of the first day of 2024, New York’s minimum-wage increase took effect.  As reported by the NY Post, on Monday a series of annual pay jumps went into play, adding $1 per hour for minimum wage in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County.  This brought the base pay up from $15 to $16. In all other parts of NYS, the new minimum wage is slightly lower, having inched up to $15, up from $14.20.  “Starting January 1, minimum wage workers who do not see the increase reflected in their paychecks are urged to file a complaint with the Department of Labor to make sure that they get the wages they are owed,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul.  She said the pay bump will “help to ensure that New Yorkers can continue to keep pace with rising costs.”

The state’s minimum wage is slated to continue its incline annually until 2026, when it reaches $17 in New York City and its suburbs, and in the rest of the state to $16.  The preset wage bumps were announced last April, following an agreement between Gov. Hochul and legislative leaders.  The negotiations had pitted liberal Democrats, who sought to increase wages well above the current level, versus big and medium size companies who said they wouldn’t be able to keep as many employees if the wages were raised too much.  Future pay increases will be based upon increases in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, a key measurement of inflation, which basically measures how much urban consumers need to pay for a market basket of consumer goods.

New York’s minimum wage is now well above the country’s federal minimum of $7.25 per hour, which has remained unchanged since 2009.  Another 22 states also saw their minimum wages rise as they ushered in the New Year, per a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute.  The highest statewide minimum wage is in Washington at $16.28, followed closely by California at $16.

States and localities are free to set higher amounts for certain locations or certain workers.  Per the Post, in the Big Apple, delivery apps including Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub will be on the hook to pay $17.96 per hour to their delivery workers. The delivery giants fought hard to block New York City’s minimum wage law targeting the app-based firms, but ultimately lost their second attempt.  On Nov. 30th, a state appeals court decided that the delivery apps need to either pay couriers the flat hourly rate of $17.96, plus tips, or pay per delivery at about 50 cents a minute.

The decision was originally made on September 2023 by New York Acting Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Moyne, and the appeals court rejected the companies’ joint efforts to stop the law from going into effect.  The delivery workers’ wages will rise to nearly $20 in April 2025.  Per the Post, this law is to make up for the city’s apps delivery workers’ previously lower than minimum wage average salary, in which city delivery gigs had earned roughly $11 an hour after calculating expenses.  Since the delivery workers were not contractual employees the minimum wages did not apply to them.  Mayor Eric Adams said at the time that the ruling increasing their pay was a “win for working New Yorkers,” calling the decision “a powerful tool to hold apps accountable.”