Mayor, City Council Approves $13 Minimum Wage Increase by 2019

Deborah Bayliss | As of Thursday, December 4, 2014

A new minimum wage was approved Tuesday in Chicago, where fast food workers and activists demonstrated outside McDonald's downtown restaurant this summer.
A new minimum wage was approved Tuesday in Chicago, where fast food workers and activists demonstrated outside McDonald's downtown restaurant this summer. Scott Olson/Getty Images

Chicago employees currently earning the $8.25 minimum wage, received an early Christmas gift with the City Council ordinance approval on Tuesday that hikes hourly worker’s pay over the next four years to $13 per hour by 2019.

“A higher minimum wage ensures that nobody who works in the City of Chicago will ever struggle to reach the middle class or be forced to raise their child in poverty,” Mayor Emanuel said. “Today, Chicago has shown that our City is behind a fair working wage.”

Sponsored by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Aldermen Will Burns, (4th Ward); Pat O’Connor (40th Ward) and 31 other aldermen, the measure will increase the earnings for approximately 410,000 Chicago workers, inject $860 million into the local economy, and lift 70,000 workers out of poverty.

“More than 400,000 Chicago workers will benefit from this increase in the local minimum wage," said Alderman Burns, Co-Chairman of the Mayor’s Minimum Wage Working Group. “Raising the wage to $13 will have a positive impact on the entire City, but more importantly, it will help lift Chicago workers out of poverty and help them better provide for their children, who are the future of this City."

The ordinance also proposes that the tipped minimum wage in Chicago increase by $1 over two years from the current state minimum of $4.95 to $5.45 as of July 1, 2015 and $5.95 as of July 1, 2016, and be indexed to inflation every July 1 going forward.

"The residents of the City of Chicago deserve a raise and today, we have taken an important step to ensure that more than 400,000 workers have a chance to reach the middle class,” said Ald. O'Connor, Chairman of the City Council Committee on Workforce Redevelopment and Audit. “It is a good day for the City of Chicago and for its residents."

John Bouman, president of Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, said, “This ordinance is a victory for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working people who will receive a raise and be better able to keep their families out of poverty. The boost to income also means that they will be able to buy goods and services in Chicago's stores and restaurants and help propel the local economy. A higher wage in Chicago gives all workers in the city a better chance for upward mobility."

Chicago’s minimum-wage workers will see their first increase next July, when the rate increases to $10 an hour.

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