Lawmakers, workers plan to keep pushing for Pennsylvania to raise the minimum wage<\/p>\n
by Emily Scolnick, Pennsylvania Capital-Star<\/a> \u00a0<\/p>\n Emily Scolnick is a 2026 Dow Jones News Fund intern at the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.\u00a0<\/p>\n State Sen. Christine Tartaglione (D-Philadelphia) rises at the end of every legislative session with one message for lawmakers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been 7,309 days since Pennsylvania last raised the minimum wage,\u201d she said at the end of the session on July 12, immediately after the legislature passed this year\u2019s budget<\/a> without a wage increase.<\/p>\n \u201cThis year marked 20 years \u2014\u00a020 years\u00a0\u2014 since Pennsylvania last raised its minimum wage,\u201d Tartaglione told the chamber. \u201cTwenty years of rising rent, rising grocery bills, rising utility costs, rising healthcare expenses. Twenty years in which every one of our neighboring states recognized that working people deserve better.\u201d<\/p>\n Pennsylvania\u2019s minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour since a federally mandated increase<\/a> in 2009. The state hasn\u2019t raised it on its own since 2006, when Tartaglione negotiated a bill raising the wage to $7.15.<\/p>\n All of its neighboring states, from West Virginia to New York, have raised their wages higher than the federal minimum in that time.<\/p>\n \u201cThe system is not set up to help the working class anymore,\u201d said Lynn Weidner, a home care worker from Allentown. She makes $16.26 an hour as a paid caregiver for her partner, who has cerebral palsy. She\u2019s also an unpaid caregiver for her mother, who has Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n Caregivers like Weidner only get a wage increase if they receive money from the state budget. The 2025-2026 spending plan included a $21 million increase<\/a> in funding for direct home care workers, which allowed workers like Weidner to receive a pay hike.<\/p>\n There is no such increase in this year\u2019s spending plan, meaning caregivers won\u2019t be getting another raise. And while they\u2019re making above minimum wage \u2014\u00a0largely thanks to the lobbying efforts of their unions \u2014 they still struggle with basic needs, and some make too much to qualify for certain state and federal benefits.<\/p>\n Caregivers are not alone in their struggles to make ends meet. According to the state Department of Labor and Industry\u2019s most recent minimum wage report<\/a>, just under 43,000 workers across the commonwealth made $7.25 or less in 2025.<\/p>\n Over 510,000 others made between $7.26 and $15 an hour \u2014 all well below Pennsylvania\u2019s average living wage<\/a>, which is over $22 an hour.<\/p>\n Legislative efforts<\/p>\n Tartaglione was sworn in as a state senator in 1995 and introduced her first minimum wage legislation<\/a> that year. It never advanced to a full vote.<\/p>\n \u201cI have introduced one every session for the past 32 years,\u201d she said. She\u2019s been reminding senators how long it has been since a wage increase on the floor of the Senate since before Gov. Josh Shapiro took office.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s legislation proposed a gradual increase of the minimum wage, peaking at $15 an hour by 2029, and incorporated an annual cost of living increase starting in 2030. It passed the state House in March<\/a> but never advanced from the Senate Labor & Industry Committee.<\/p>\n Tartaglione called the minimum wage a \u201cmoral issue,\u201d emphasizing the economic benefits of ensuring working-class constituents have a stable, living income.<\/p>\n As the cost of living and inflation continue to increase, workers are struggling to live comfortably, even as Tartaglione said Senate Republicans have alleged \u201cnobody\u2019s making $7.25 an hour anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy comeback is, \u2018Well, tell that to my single mother who\u2019s working three jobs because she needs to pay rent, she needs to put food on the table,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cHow about the people that sweep the streets? How about the people that serve you the food when you go somewhere? They\u2019re all making $7.25 an hour. And we\u2019re telling them they\u2019re not important.\u201d<\/p>\n Shapiro has been vocal about his desire to raise Pennsylvania\u2019s minimum wage, making it a legislative priority in each of his budget addresses during his first term as governor.<\/p>\n But each year\u2019s measure\u00a0has stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. Democratic lawmakers from both chambers have expressed frustration with their GOP counterparts and emphasized that raising the wage remains a legislative priority.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s shameful that Pennsylvania Senate Republicans have refused to raise the minimum wage for decades while every state around us has done so,\u201d Alex Peterson, a spokesperson for Shapiro, wrote in a statement. \u201cThe Governor will continue to stand up for the working women and men of Pennsylvania and calls on Senate Republicans to put this up for a vote.\u201d<\/p>\n On the Senate floor on June 30, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) said he has \u201cmade it very clear publicly and privately that we are prepared to talk about meeting in the middle\u201d to raise the wage.<\/p>\n Tartaglione said that in conversations with Pittman, \u201che says maybe $11 [or] $12 an hour\u201d could be a reasonable minimum wage compromise that could pass both legislative chambers.<\/p>\n Pittman\u2019s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.<\/p>\n Workers\u2019 struggles continue<\/p>\n Suzzanne Ott, a caregiver who lives in Venango County, received a wage increase earlier this year. She was previously making $12.91 an hour \u2014\u00a0above minimum wage, but not enough to make ends meet.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes it hard for people to survive,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we make enough that we\u2019re over welfare, we don\u2019t get food stamps, we don\u2019t get medical [care]. So sometimes it comes to a point where it\u2019s like \u2018Oh, I can\u2019t go to the doctor because my kids need food.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Ott now earns $17.50 an hour, which she said has made a big difference in how she and her family live, from being able to pay bills on time to saving money for the first time in years.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve made so many sacrifices in the last few months,\u201d she said. \u201cEverything isn\u2019t perfect for me. But it\u2019s a lot better than it was.\u201d<\/p>\n Weidner agreed \u2014 noting her wage increase helped her keep her health insurance. But, she said she and many other workers are still struggling.<\/p>\n Some, who got a raise but still make under $15 an hour, have been disqualified from Medicaid and face high prices from Pennie, the state health insurance, Weidner said.<\/p>\n \u201cWorkers lost their health insurance because of the lack of subsidies, and we\u2019re in this weird limbo area of not making enough but making a little too much to get any assistance,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Tartaglione urged Republicans to vote on minimum wage legislation for the sake of Pennsylvania workers.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone deserves to make a livable wage,\u201d Ott said. \u201cRaising the minimum wage doesn\u2019t make it a livable wage.\u201d<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n Pennsylvania Capital-Star<\/a> is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Tim Lambert for questions: info@penncapital-star.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawmakers, workers plan to keep pushing for Pennsylvania to raise the minimum wage by Emily Scolnick, Pennsylvania Capital-StarJuly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-255444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
July 28, 2026<\/p>\n