Washington D.C.'s city council has approved raising the minimum wage to $11.50 an hour starting in 2016, Reuters reports, one of the highest minimum wage boosts across the U.S.
The city council gave a unanimous final approval today on raising the base pay in the wealthy D.C. metro region, the initiative aided by lawmakers in Montgomery and Prince George's County, both part of D.C.'s Maryland suburbs.
The current base pay in the national's capital is $8.25 an hour, and will be indexed for inflation in 2016. Once the new minimum wage takes effect, "the three jurisdictions [of D.C., Prince George's and Montgomery County] would form a region with 2.5 million residents and a minimum wage higher than any of the 50 states," according to Reuters.The coordinated effort is meant to "eliminate the competitive disadvantage," as Councilmember Andrea Harrison told CNN Money.
As of now, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
Democratic Mayor Vincent Gray opposes the meausre to raise minimum wage in D.C. to $11.50, having urged instead for an increase to $10, as he is unsure how such a drastic change may affect the labor market. However, the city council's unanimous vote could pass over Gray's veto.
Others are also worried about the increase in minimum wage, including, Jim Dinegar, the president and chief executive of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, who told Reuters that higher wages may make the capital and the region less attractive to business, especially since bordering state Virginia's minimum wage of $7.25 has and will likely remain unchanged.
"They think they're doing this in a vacuum. They're not," he said.
Last week, the Census Bureau reported that "eight of the 13 U.S. counties with the highest median income last year were in the Washington area."
