Get Ready Business Owners, Another WA Min. Wage Hike Coming

No, there's no state law pushing us to $20 an hour...at least not yet.

  Another minimum wage hike is coming on January 1st.

In WA state, by state law, minimum wage hikes have to reflect COLA or cost of living increases, so the wage would go up anyway. However, due to the push to get to $15 per hour a few years ago, our raises push minimum wage to much higher rates than other states.

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Labor and Industries announced on Tuesday, September 30th. the rate will go up 2.8 percent January 1st. from $16.66 per hour (which is the highest state rate in the US) to $17.13.

State law allows cities or municipalities to enact their own higher rates, which 7 cities (including Seattle) have done as well as the unincorporated areas of King County. Some of them are already at $20 per hour.

The rates will continue to climb, according to information from how L-I determines raises:

"L&I is using an eight-year implementation schedule to incrementally raise how much more than the minimum wage a salaried employee must earn to be exempt from overtime. The increases will continue until 2028, when the threshold reaches 2.5 times the minimum wage. The pace of the increase varies based on the size of the employer."

There was a Democrat party proposal in the 2025 WA legislative session to lift the wage to $25 per hour by 2031, but it failed to get out of committee and did not become law.

CA, which has a $20 minimum wage, saw in the fast food industry, a loss of about 18,000 jobs, about 3.2 of that sector's workforce. The law went into effect in 2023, and studies have shown it's also resulted in higher menu prices and reduced hours at many restaurants to cut expenses.