State’s Minimum Wage To Increase
About 23,500 Montana workers will experience a pay increase at the start of the new year. Montana will increase its minimum wage to $9.95 an hour, an increase of 75 cents, starting on Jan. 1, 2023.
Montana statute requires the minimum wage be adjusted annually based on changes in inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index all Urban Consumers from August of the year in which the calculation is made and is rounded to the nearest $0.05. Department is required to make this adjustment by Sept. 30 each year.
The amount is the largest inflationary increase since January 2007, when voters passed a ballot initiative to increase the minimum wage by $1 an hour.
At the start of 2022, the minimum wage increased from $8.75 to $9.20.
If you have questions regarding this increase, contact the state’s Employment Relations Division at 406-444-6543.
Four states in the nation will have minimum hourly wages at or above $15 as of Jan. 1, 2023. Those states are Washington at $15.74, California at $15.50, Connecticut at $15 and Massachusetts at $15.
Washington, D.C. has the highest minimum wage in the country at $16.10 an hour.
The federal minimum wage is staying unchanged at $7.25. The last increase came on July 24, 2009.
The federal minimum wage applies in the following 20 states: Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
In addition, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee have no minimum-wage laws. Georgia and Wyoming each have set $5.15 as the state minimum wage, meaning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 applies to their residents in most cases.
