Vermont minimum wage will increase in January but hasn’t kept pace with living wage demands

Vermont’s minimal wage will improve by 63 cents per hour on the primary day of 2023, the Vermont Division of Labor introduced this week.

However even with the bump up from $12.55 to $13.18 per hour, the brand new minimal wage will fall wanting what state analysts contemplate to be a residing wage in Vermont.

For an worker incomes minimal wage and dealing a typical 40-hour week, the rise will quantity to an extra $25.20 per week earlier than taxes and roughly $1,310 per yr, barring any unpaid time without work.

Tipped employees in Vermont, comparable to restaurant servers, can even see a bump of their hourly minimal wage — which is half of the usual minimal wage — from $6.28 to $6.59 per hour, not together with suggestions.

Vermont’s minimal wage has progressively scaled up over time as a consequence of a regulation handed by the Legislature in 2020, at which level the minimal wage was $10.96 per hour. The regulation established the primary two will increase, as much as $11.75 in January 2021 and $12.55 in January 2022.

For subsequent years, together with 2023, it calls on the state to calculate the minimal wage in proportion to the Shopper Value Index.

Based on the state’s most up-to-date “Fundamental Wants Finances and Livable Wage” report, a residing wage in Vermont for these with a companion and no youngsters was $13.39 per hour in 2020. It was a lot greater for these with completely different household configurations. For instance, a single guardian with two youngsters residing in Chittenden County would have needed to earn $41.78 an hour that yr to make ends meet.

The Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Workplace releases the report each two years, calculating how a lot Vermonters would want to earn each hour as a way to meet their fundamental monetary wants. 

The workplace doesn’t anticipate to launch its up to date livable wage calculations till the brand new yr. However Daniel Dickerson, a senior fiscal analyst with the workplace, informed VTDigger through e mail on Wednesday that, based mostly on preliminary numbers, he expects “the livable wage will most probably be growing probably the most that it has in a number of report cycles, which isn’t a stretch given inflation.”

The federal minimal wage is $7.25 per hour.