Connecticut’s hourly minimum wage will increase to $15.69 starting Jan. 1, 2024. It’s the state’s first automatic minimum wage adjustment tied to inflation rates.
Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, announced the change Monday. The state’s minimum wage has gone up in steady increments in recent years from $11 an hour in 2019, to an hourly rate of $15 in June.
Those increases were mandated under a 2019 law. The law also says that beginning in 2024, hourly minimum wages in Connecticut will change yearly in response to a national measure of inflation in the labor market, called the the Employment Cost Index.
Continuing to raise the minimum wage is important for both job retention and residents’ quality of life, Lamont said.
“The minimum wage was a little bit over $10. Now it's $15.69,” Lamont said. “That represents about $200 a week savings for folks earning the minimum wage.”
State officials said the change could impact pay for between 160,000 to 200,000 minimum wage workers.
The change was met with praise Monday from labor leaders who had strongly advocated for the law’s passage. Ed Hawthorne, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, said tying the wage to inflation creates more predictability for low-wage workers.
“Instead of years where there's no increases and other years where the minimum wage gets bumped so they can catch up, there's a steady rise that tracks inflationary trends,” Hawthorne said.
Future adjustments to the minimum wage will occur every Jan. 1, state officials said.
