Introduction

Raising the minimum wage to $17 by 2024 would give 269,000 Hawaiʻi workers a pay increase. This means that, in 2024, about four in 10 Hawaiʻi workers would earn roughly $4,356 more each year than they do today. This raise would especially help working women and parents in low- to middle-income households, helping to keep them and their families out of poverty and homelessness.

By 2024, Hawaiʻi’s minimum and near-minimum wage workers would receive a total of over $1.3 billion in additional wages. Not only would such a pay increase help to improve the living standards of affected Hawaiʻi workers, it but would also strengthen local businesses, as low-wage workers plow almost every additional dollar of earnings back into the local economy.

Decades of research has shown that past minimum wage increases have achieved their intended effects: raising pay for low-wage workers with little to no negative impact on employment. Moreover, studies that have looked beyond the narrow question of employment impacts have found clear, meaningful benefits from higher minimum wages to low-wage workers, their families, and their broader communities and economies.

Hawaiʻi has the highest cost of living of all the states. When that is factored in, Hawaiʻi has the lowest average wage in the nation. While a law was passed to increase the minimum wage in 2014, our state’s minimum wage topped out at $10.10 an hour—or $21,000 a year for full-time work—in January 2018.

Since Hawaiʻi’s minimum wage does not have an automatic cost-of-living adjustment—unlike 17 other states and the District of Columbia—the minimum wage has been losing ground to inflation for over a year, and will continue to fall, if our lawmakers don’t act to change it.

High housing costs in Hawaiʻi are a major factor driving the high cost of living. To afford a one- bedroom rental home, a Hawaiʻi worker would have needed to earn $27.44 per hour in 2018. In other words, a current Hawaiʻi minimum wage earner would need to work 109 hours per week—equivalent to over 15 hours a day with no days off—to rent that one-bedroom home.

Other states have increased their minimum wages to help ensure that workers can afford to house and feed their families. Currently 10 states and the District of Columbia have minimum wages higher than in Hawaiʻi. California, New York, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, Illinois, and Maryland have all passed laws to increase their minimum wage to $15 per hour, while their costs of living are all lower than in Hawaiʻi.