Minimum Wage Hikes On the Ballot in 2 States

Minimum wage increases will be on the ballot in two states next month with voters in Arkansas and Missouri set to vote on gradually raising their respective minimum wages over the next few years. Here’s a look at the two initiatives:

Arkansas’s Issue 5 would gradually raise the state’s minimum wage from $8.50 an hour to $11 an hour in 2021 as follows:

• $9.25 an hour in 2019.
• $10 an hour in 2020.
• $11 an hour in 2021.

Four years ago, Arkansas voters approved the 2014 iteration of Issue 5, a ballot initiative that gradually raised the state’s minimum wage from $6.25 to $7.25 in 2015, $8 in 2016, and $8.50 in 2017. (The current federal minimum wage is $7.25.)

Missouri’s Proposition B would increase the state’s minimum wage by 85 cents an hour annually from 2019 to 2023, raising it from the current level of $7.85 an hour at present to $12 an hour in 2023:

• $8.60 an hour in 2019.
• $9.45 an hour in 2020.
• $10.30 an hour in 2021.
• $11.15 an hour in 2022.
• $12 an hour in 2023.

Missouri established a minimum wage that rises or falls based on changes in the Consumer Price Index via a ballot measure in 2006.

— Eric Revell & Lorelei Yang

(Photo Credit: iStock.com / IcemanJ)