in our Spotlight on Business Report tonight hourly workers got a raise to kick off the new year that bump coming from the state's minimum wage jumping up by a dollar on January 1st to $15.13 it's a boon for workers but as Melissa Rose Cooper reports as their wages rise so too does the rate of inflation many New Jersey families kicking off the start of the new year with a little more in their pockets as the state minimum wage just increased to $15 13 cents an hour so this is a huge win for New Jersey workers and all the Evy groups that work hard to try to raise the wage which had been stuck um for a long time the increase is expected to impact roughly 350,000 workers across the state many of these people do work full-time some of them if you kind of back that off a little bit less say it's like 15,600 uh 1600 hours you're looking at something probably in the tune of about 20 you know 20 uh know, anywhere from ,100 to say6 $1,700 uh additionally these families would get so somewhere probably in the range of 100 to maybe $150 a month or so New Jersey is one of several states to boost its minimum wage to at least $15 effective January 1st beating out the federal minimum of 725 as one of Governor Murphy's top priorities during his first term in office the minimum wage gradually Grew From 860 an hour in 2018 to 1513 legislature uh included a provision that every year uh after the dollar increase that would also go up by the rate of inflation uh so last year the increase went up by a13 which is why the minimum wage uh as of yesterday is now $153 cents uh and if we and every year going forward the increase will go up uh by the amount of the CPI uh increase regardless if there's another change to the actual minimum wage rate this year's additional $1 hike to 1513 makes it the state's highest ever the the federal rate is an embarrassment so I'm open-minded uh I'd say we should consider a meaningful again phasing to something maybe toward 18 or 20 but advocacy it's just the first step there are a lot of workers who don't get $15 an hour these are workers who are agricultural workers seasonal workers people who are uh tipped workers like restaurant employees right there's no reason why honest day's work as an agricultural worker should be lower paid than an honest day's work as a retail sales employee every worker is affected by the increase uh but seasonal workers agricultural workers they're moving up at a at a rate a little bit slower than the rest of workers the effects of the increase also being felt among small businesses like Colonial Bakery and Lavalette our three biggest uh expenses are our payroll um our ingredients and our paper goods so as one of the B biggest expenses goes up so do our prices Allison O'Neal says two summers ago they were forced to increase prices by about 10% but O'Neal believes the issue is bigger than just paying employees higher wages I'll pay employees whatever you want me to pay them like that it doesn't bother me um it's it's just that it's not helping anybody it's not helping these minimum wage workers earn any more buying power because as the minimum wage increases and as my payroll increases my prices increase so it's not like they're gaining more money and then they're also gaining more buying power in the economy they're earning more money but the price of everything is going up the Department of Labor says all minimum wage workers in New Jersey will be at $15 an hour or above by 2027 for NJ Spotlight news I'm Melissa Rose Cooper [Music]