Fourteen states raised minimum wages on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, including New York and California, reported NBC News.
Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Vermont all increased their minimum wages on Friday. New York and West Virginia's minimum wage hikes went into effect on Thursday.
California and Massachusetts both went from $9 to $10 per hour, while Nebraska also increase its minimum wage by $1 to $9 an hour.
Michigan increased its minimum wage by 35 cents an hour, and New Yorkers and West Virginians now have a minimum wage of $9 and $8.75 an hour, respectively.
Colorado's minimum hourly pay went from $8.23 to $8.31, while the smallest increase came in South Dakota, where the hourly minimum wage went up a nickel to $8.55.
Only 29 states and Washington, D.C. have wages higher than the federally mandated minimum of $7.25 an hour, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Nevada, Minnesota and Maryland are expected to increase their minimum wages later in the year.
Several cities are going even higher than the states. Seattle enacted a sliding hourly minimum wage between $10.50 and $13 on Jan. 1, while Los Angeles and San Francisco are implementing similar systems in July, which will eventually increase to $15 an hour over six years.
The hikes come as Americans continue to experience broad-based pay stagnation, even in the face of falling unemployment rates, The International Business Times explained.
In November, a series of "living wage" demonstrations took place in 270 cities across the nation, with protesters marching in support of a $15 per hour minimum wage and union rights for fast food workers, who make up the largest group of minimum-wage earners, according to Reuters.
Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, praised the series of increases but said that they are unlikely to make much difference.
"The increases in 2016, particularly those that aim for $15 within a reasonable period, are a good start but they will not immediately halt broad-based wage stagnation," Owens told IBT. "That's because wages have been stagnant or fallen across the board for most workers - particularly for workers whose wages are lowest - for many years, and it will take a while for these patterns to reverse."
