Twenty one states raised their minimum wages on Jan. 1, but Pennsylvania was not among them.

The minimum wage, the lowest hourly wage employers can legally pay, has remained unchanged at $7.25 an hour since 2010, when the federal minimum wage last increased.

That’s not for a lack of desire or effort to increase it over the last decade and a half. While the Democratic controlled House last year passed a measure to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, it died in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Pennsylvania Democrats say raising the wages of the commonwealth’s lowest-paid workers will again be at the top of their agenda in the 2025-2026 legislative session. 

“The fact that Pennsylvania’s minimum wage continues to be $7.25 an hour is just immoral,” House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D-Montgomery) told reporters when the newly elected House convened for the first time on Jan. 7. 

“It’s unconscionable. I can’t imagine with the affordability crisis that we have in this commonwealth, that anyone thinks it’s appropriate to be paying someone $7.25 an hour,” he said.

Gov. Josh Shapiro also said increasing the minimum wage will be top of mind when he introduces his 2025-2026 budget proposal next month. Shapiro’s first two budgets included increases in the minimum wage.

“To strengthen the economy, we need to raise wages. We need to finally pass a minimum wage increase in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said Wednesday at a news conference in Lycoming County.

“I’ve been for it for years, the House passed it two or three times, the Senate has yet to take it up.”

Nearly 68,000 Pennsylvania workers earned minimum wage or less in 2023, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry’s Minimum Wage Advisory Board. Another 800,000 earned between $7.25 and $15 an hour. Those earning minimum wage or less were most likely to be female, white and between 20 and 24 years old, among other attributes.

Yanette Lathrop, senior researcher and policy analyst for the National Employment Law Project, said $7.25 an hour is a poverty wage in Pennsylvania and across the country. 

“Even for a single adult without children it’s not enough,” Lathrop said.

The United Way developed the ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) model to calculate living wages for families across the country. It estimates the minimum cost of housing, child care, food, transportation, health care and technology plus a 10% contingency fund.

Under that model a single full-time worker must earn between $13 and $19 an hour to survive financially in Pennsylvania. A family of four with two adults working full-time, a survival wage is between $16 and $23 an hour.

“The inaction in Pennsylvania and in Congress is essentially dooming the workers who earn the federal minimum wage to poverty,” Lathrop said.

In June 2023, the House passed a bill that would incrementally increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next three years, with ongoing increases keyed to the consumer price index.

Although it received some bipartisan support, with votes from two House Republicans, it was not considered in the GOP-led Senate.

Bradford called on Senate Republicans to make a counter offer.

“We’ve shown what we can pass. What can you pass on the minimum wage? Or do you actually just agree with keeping it at $7.25, an hour? I think that’s a conversation that needs to be out in the public,” Bradford said. 

Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) said in 2023 and repeated last week that although Senate Republicans are open to discussing a “reasonable adjustment” to the minimum wage, $15 an hour is a non-starter.

Pittman said the General Assembly’s focus should instead be on creating more opportunities for businesses and workers.

“The minimum wage debate fails to recognize the importance of maximum wages, which are what actually allow families to grow and prosper across the Commonwealth,” Pittman said in a statement to the Capital-Star. “I continue to struggle with the lack of focus our friends in the House place on initiatives to foster maximum wage job opportunities, such as those that come from the responsible use of our God given natural resources.”

Pittman added, “Until our friends in the House understand a more reasonable number must be put on the table, there is little to deliberate.”

Among the reasons Senate Republicans have opposed a $15 an hour minimum wage is the impact it could have on nonprofit organizations that deliver essential social services, Pittman said.

For those organizations, wages for care workers present a complicated problem in balancing the ability to deliver services to as many clients as possible with the moral obligation to pay a living wage, Anne Gingerich, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofit Organizations, said.

“We don’t want to send our folks to get public benefits like SNAP or Medicaid,” Gingerich said, adding that many nonprofit organizations have struggled to retain workers as other employers have offered higher wages.

Child care providers and other groups have lobbied successfully for more state funding to support higher wages for workers. The 2024-2025 state budget included $280 million to raise wages for direct support professionals who provide individual care for autistic and intellectually disabled people.

“Our workforce is the most valued asset of all nonprofit organizations,” Gingerich said. “We have long taken the stance that we support efforts that would lead to sustainable wages for those who work for nonprofit organizations and those we serve.”

Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (D-Allegheny) said the Republican position doesn’t dampen Democrats’ sense of urgency to increase  minimum wages and he’s hopeful that the parties can reach an agreement on a higher hourly wage and how soon to implement it.

Pennsylvania has lagged behind other states in the region as each of its neighbors has increased minimum wages above $7.25 an hour. Only West Virginia and Ohio remain below $15 an hour and New York leads the group at $15.50 an hour.

That puts employers seeking a stable and reliable workforce at a disadvantage when workers can make considerably more at the same job by crossing the border.

“The ball is really in the court of my colleagues in the Senate Republican caucus,” Costa said, adding that he has had no recent conversations with Republican leaders on the topic. “We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to sit down among the four caucuses and work out a pathway to a higher minimum wage.”