On Monday, the first day of early filing, Texas lawmakers introduced a flurry of bills addressing much-discussed kitchen-table issues, including one by state Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, that proposes raising the state’s minimum wage.
“Texas cannot keep bragging about its economy while telling the people who keep it running to survive on $7.25 an hour,” political strategist Shea Jordan Smith wrote in a Facebook post. “Rep. Armando L. Walle’s HB 132 would raise the state’s minimum wage, and it deserves a hearing, a vote, and the governor’s signature.”
Under Texas Labor Code §62.051, Texas doesn’t set its own minimum wage independently of the federal government, as some other states do. Rather, it adopts the federal rate established by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Texas’ minimum wage has mirrored the federal minimum since the Texas Minimum Wage Act was passed in 1993. The federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 per hour since 2009, when the final phase of a three-step increase approved by Congress in 2007 took effect.
Since then, the cost of living has skyrocketed. Over the past year alone, the ongoing Iran War has driven up fuel prices, adding to the financial pressures facing working Texans.
“Rent went up. Groceries went up. The light bill went up. But working Texans are still supposed to make the same $7.25 stretch,” Smith continued. “Pay people enough to live.”
According to the latest data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator, a single adult in Texas needs to earn approximately $21.77 per hour, or roughly $45,290 annually before taxes, to meet basic living expenses without assistance. That number increases for households with children.
Meanwhile, the same calculator shows that any amount under $7.67 an hour for a single adult constitutes a “poverty wage.”
More than 30 states — as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico — have a higher minimum wage than the federal threshold, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Those include not just Democratic strongholds such as California, New York, Oregon, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Washington but also historically Republican-controlled states including Florida, Arkansas and Alaska.
States other than Texas rely on different formulas. Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Oregon and others adjust their minimum wages annually using formulas that account for factors such as inflation and the cost of living.
However, if the federal minimum wage ever exceeds Vermont’s state minimum, the higher federal rate automatically takes precedence.
Nationwide, 69 cities and counties also have established minimum wages above the federal rate, according to data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute. Those include Portland, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Tucson and Seattle.
None of these municipalities are in the Lone Star State. Texas municipalities can’t set their own higher minimum wage for private-sector workers because state law explicitly supersedes local wage ordinances.
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