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Poll: Widespread support among Mass. voters for raising minimum wage to $20 per hour
The minimum wage in Massachusetts is now $15 per hour.
New polling shows that a majority of Massachusetts voters would support raising the minimum wage.
In total, 59% of voters in the state said that they would support raising it to $20 an hour. On the other hand, 33% of voters surveyed said they were opposed to the idea and 7% said that they were undecided, State House News Service reported.
The poll was conducted by Change Research for Northwind Strategies and shared with SHNS. Last month, 711 likely voters responded to the survey. Pollsters recruited responses through Facebook and Instagram, as well as through text messages.
At $15 per hour, Massachusetts has one of the highest minimum wage rates in the country, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. Only California’s rate of $15.50 per hour, Washington’s rate of $15.74 per hour, and Washington, D.C.’s rate of $16.50 are higher.
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In 2018, lawmakers passed legislation that gradually increased the minimum wage in Massachusetts every year until 2023. It rose to $12 per hour in 2019, and then by an additional 75 cents per hour each year. The minimum wage hit $15 per hour on Jan. 1, 2023.
“I was surprised, to be honest — given that we just raised the minimum wage — that support was this high on the heels of finishing up the last hike. But it is,” Democratic strategist Doug Rubin told SHNS.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, $20 in January 2018 had the same buying power as $24.27 does now.
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The yearly increases to the state’s minimum wage stopped in 2023. Now, advocates like Massachusetts AFL-CIO Chief of Staff Chrissy Lynch are pushing to raise it again as inflation continues to impact the economy.
“When we were fighting for this [several years ago], … nobody ever saw $15 an hour as a living wage, but we knew it would help people,” Lynch told Boston.com in January.
“Now, $15 — it’s a great accomplishment, but so much more needs to be done,” she added. “It has not kept pace with inflation, and the lowest wage workers are still pretty desperately trying to make ends meet.”
The living wage for a single adult living alone in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton area is $22.59 per hour, according to MIT’s living wage calculator. The living wage for two working adults living together without children is $15.93 per hour, and $25.56 per hour if they have one child.
Two bills, one filed by Winchester Sen. Jason Lewis and another filed by Reps. Tram Nguyen of Andover and Daniel Donahue of Worcester, would raise the minimum wage by $1.25 per hour each year until it hits $20 in 2027, SHNS reported. Starting in 2028, the minimum wage in Massachusetts would be tied to the consumer price index so that it rises automatically with inflation.
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Last month, Gov. Maura Healey was noncommittal when asked about her support for continued minimum wage increases. During an interview with WBUR’s “Radio Boston,” the new governor said that other ways of increasing affordability for residents need to be considered alongside minimum wage.
“When you talk about affordability, certainly wage and minimum wage is important, but it’s also important to look at what are we doing around food security, what are we doing around housing, what are we doing to drive down the cost of child care,” she said.
Last Friday the coalition of community organizations, faith-based groups, and labor unions known as Raise Up Massachusetts filed paperwork with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance indicating that it was prepared to organize another ballot campaign for increasing the minimum wage, SHNS reported.
“We considered organizing for a ballot initiative as a way to force the issue a bit,” SEIU State Council Executive Director Harris Gruman, who filed the paperwork on behalf of Raise Up, told SHNS. “There is a tendency on Beacon Hill to go slow and be cautious. We respect that but with this, we feel the need to put it on the front burner.”
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