ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Florida\u2019s minimum wage increased to $15 an hour in the final scheduled annual increase approved by voters as part of a 2020 constitutional amendment.<\/p>\n
The amendment raised Florida\u2019s minimum wage by $1 each year after it took effect in 2021. Going forward, the state\u2019s minimum wage will be adjusted annually for inflation.<\/p>\n
When voters passed the amendment in 2020, Florida\u2019s minimum wage was $8.56.<\/a><\/p>\n For some workers, the increase comes as the cost of living in the Sunshine State remains a challenge.<\/p>\n Shyanne Tharp, a welder helper at Westbrook<\/a>, moved to Florida from Iowa three years ago. Iowa\u2019s minimum hourly wage was $7.25 then and has not changed. <\/p>\n Tharp said she worked as a detailer in Iowa and was paid well, but struggled to find work after relocating to Florida.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery job you apply to, you don\u2019t get a call back,\u201d Tharp said. \u201cI would sit every night and apply job after job after job. I was applying to 200 jobs a month not getting a call and I was like, ‘What\u2019s going on here?’\u201d<\/p>\n After learning about Westbrook at a job fair last year, she entered welding work.<\/p>\n \u201cIt opened my eyes to realize how many different opportunities there are in the world,\u201d Tharp said.<\/p>\n Tharp said she and her husband both earn more than minimum wage, but still face financial pressure. She said their cost of living is about $3,500 a month, mostly for rent and monthly bills.<\/p>\n \u201cI make above minimum wage and so does my husband and that still is hard to make by, and we don\u2019t even have kids,\u201d Tharp said.<\/p>\n She also found help through CareerSource Central Florida<\/a>, which helped pay for her schooling. Since 2020, nearly 78,000 people received services from the organization.<\/p>\n Vice President of Workforce Operations Gina Ronokarijo said increases in the minimum wage can affect workers who already earn above it.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we do notice is sometimes the wages start to compress a little,” Ronokarijo said. “So, you start to see some uneasiness with some of the skilled folks saying, ‘I should also be going up in this labor market.'”<\/p>\n Ronokarijo said CareerSource Central Florida is seeing an uptick in people looking for work because of higher unemployment rates. She said competition, rather than pay, is making the job market difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re going to have more skilled laborers maybe competing for those same jobs,” Ronokarijo said. “So they may be a little more competitive, but the wage doesn\u2019t have anything to do with it.\u201d <\/p>\n According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,<\/a> Orlando\u2019s unemployment rate increased from 4.1% to 4.7% from July 2025 to July 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Florida\u2019s minimum wage increased to $15 an hour in the final scheduled annual increase approved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1015,115,139,141,140,835],"class_list":["post-414553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-emma-delamo","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}