Governor Josh Shapiro of Abington Township has again called for Pennsylvania to increase its minimum wage, dubbing the current rate and the federal minimum of $7.25 “too damn low” in a post on Monday.

“I’m fighting to raise it, and Pennsylvania House Democrats have passed our plan — but Senate Republicans are holding our Commonwealth back,” the post said. “With just three Republican-held seats blocking our progress, let’s work together to flip the Senate in 2026 — and finally raise the minimum wage here in Pennsylvania.”

Shapiro, among other Pennsylvania legislators, has previously advocated for an uptick. Last year, he suggested in a post that “Pennsylvania is losing out” as “every single one of our neighboring states has raised their minimum wage.”

In July 2024, Philadelphia Senator Christine Tartaglione drafted a proposal to raise Pennsylvania’s minimum wage to $20 an hour, which would have been the highest in the nation at the time.

“Tellingly, $7.24/hr is the very definition of a poverty-level wage for a childless adult under the Department of Health and Human Services’ Poverty Guidelines and is even further below the threshold when factoring in children,” Senator Tartaglione said in her memo. “Keeping people in poverty is not how we move the Commonwealth forward – our current wage is immoral and unjustifiable.”

Stephen Herzenberg, Executive Director at Keystone Research Center, offered the following statement last year:

Today’s $7.25 per hour minimum wage in Pennsylvania is simply not enough to ensure that workers can provide for themselves and their families. Raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, as Governor Shapiro proposed once again in his budget address today would not only improve the lives of millions of workers but also lead to a stronger and more equitable economy. We applaud his continued commitment to help working families make ends meet with a minimum wage increase – a policy that would also inject more money into Pennsylvania’s local economies.

In June 2023, Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives narrowly approved a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2026, a motion which was later voted down by the Senate. Pennsylvania’s Senate seemed to agree to raise the state’s minimum wage to $9.50 in 2019, but the effort failed after being blocked by Republicans.

Though the commentary is new, the debate is not. Supporters say that raising the minimum wage boosts worker income, reduces poverty and inequality, and encourages spending. Critics say the increase risks job losses, higher consumer prices, business closures, and increased automation. A recent press release from the Arlington-based Employment Policies Institute (EPI), for example, outlines many of those negative consequences.

An excerpt from the EPI’s press release:

The forthcoming study — co-authored by economists Jeffrey Clemens and Michael Strain — was recently accepted for publication in the prestigious Journal of Labor Economics. According to the paper, large Fight for $15-inspired increases in minimum wages from 2011 – 2019 — including those in New York, California, and Washington, D.C. — reduced employment rates among individuals with low levels of experience and education by more than 2.5 percentage points. EPI estimates that over that time period, that translates to roughly a quarter of a million jobs for young workers across the states included in the analysis.

“The final story can now be written on the Fight for $15 experiment: It backfired on tens of thousands of less-experienced workers,” said Rebekah Paxton, research director at EPI. “This new study confirms what the vast majority of economists, workers, and businesses have known for years. Steep wage hikes kill jobs, reduce employment opportunities, and shutter businesses.” 

The Philadelphia Inquirer published today an article regarding New Jersey’s wage hike of $0.43, making the state’s hourly minimum $15.92 as of January 1, 2026. New Jersey is one of 19 states that will set new minimum wages in 2026, among them Washington, D.C. (up to $18.40/hour), Washington (up to $17.13/hour), Connecticut (up to $16.94/hour), and California (up to $16.90/hour).

The study referenced in the EPI’s press release can be found here, and an EPI state-by-state analysis can be found below: