New Mexico state Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero (D-Albuquerque) recently introduced a bill that would raise New Mexico's minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025.
Roybal Caballero says she is proposing this "living wage" due to increases in the state's cost of living, including rising rents, and stagnant wages.
“It’s without question what we should be affording every hard-working family,” Roybal Caballero said. “It’s unconscionable for me to have individuals who have to work two and three jobs just to be able to afford the essentials.”
New Mexico state Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero (D-Albuquerque)
| https://www.nmlegis.gov/
About 159,000 New Mexicans are currently paid less than $12 an hour.
Roybal Caballero's bill proposes a gradual increase of $9 an hour by the end of this year, $12 an hour by 2022, and finally reaching $15 by 2025. This comes soon after Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a law gradually raising the state's minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2023.
Roybal Caballero's proposal, which is unlikely to pass due to Lujan Grisham's recent legislation, would give New Mexicans the highest minimum wage in the nation. Some worry that this could make things harder for small businesses.
Neither of these wage increases will likely have an effect in Santa Fe, where the current minimum wage is $11.80 and is adjusted each year based on the Consumer Price Index. The 2003 Santa Fe Living Wage Ordinance set a minimum wage higher than the base rate set by the state. If Caballero's bill passes, Santa Fe will no longer have the highest minimum wage in the country.
New Mexico is not the only state looking to put a bit more cash in the hands of its residents. New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland and Connecticut have all passed plans to increase the minimum wage to $15 over the next five years.
According to the Pew Research Center, today's wage has about as much purchasing power as it did 40 years ago.
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