Maine’s minimum wage will increase to $14.65 next year
The federal minimum wage has remained $7.25 an hour since 2009, and $2.13 an hour for tipped workers. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Maine’s minimum wage will increase to $14.65 per hour next year.
Currently, the state’s minimum wage is $14.15, but the Maine Department of Labor announced Wednesday the 50 cent increase that will take effect Jan. 1, 2025. The “tip wage,” or the minimum wage for service employees, will increase to $7.33 per hour.
Per Maine law and a 2016 citizens referendum, the state is required to make an annual adjustment based on the cost-of-living index for the Northeast Region. Based on data from the U.S. Department of Labor, there was a 3.6% increase in the cost-of-living index between August 2023 and last month.
The federal minimum wage has remained $7.25 an hour since 2009, and $2.13 an hour for tipped workers.
The Maine Center for Economic Policy estimates the increase will boost the wages of 96,000 people, or about one in six Maine workers who are earning at or just above the minimum wage. For a full-time, year-round worker, the increase is equivalent to slightly more than an extra $1,000 a year in wages, MECEP noted in a news release.
Included in that estimate are about 9,000 tipped workers who will see a small increase to their base wage, according to MECEP.
The group noted that this is actually one of the smallest impacts of a minimum wage increase because wage growth has been “unusually strong” for low-income occupations in recent years. But, MECEP concluded that “the fact that tens of thousands of workers are impacted demonstrates the need to maintain a robust minimum wage so that no one is left behind.”
The cities of Portland and Rockland have their own minimum wages, which is higher than the state’s. Both cities update their minimum wage based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, so their new minimum wage for 2025 will be $15.50.
