In Our Opinion

Changing minimum wage freeze doesn’t fix New York’s high cost of living

Changing minimum wage freeze doesn’t fix New York’s high cost of living

There was a reason that the wise old state legislators who drafted New York's minimum wage law back in the good old days of 2023 included conditions that would freeze otherwise automatic minimum wage increases.

The conditions – tied to situations in which the consumer price index actually went down, increases in unemployment or decreases in employment – were meant to protect the state's business community when traditional economic measures showed too many of them couldn't handle an automatic increase in the state's minimum wage. Of course, Hochul was in the room at the time since the 2023 minimum wage rewrite was part of the three women in a room budget deal that was passed in the annual all-night budget approval vote. Many of the state lawmakers who currently comprise the state Legislature were there, too. They were the ones justifying the economic safeguards that Hochul now wants to rewrite because, with an election a month away, she doesn't want to be the governor who didn't deliver a minimum wage increase during a time of high inflation in a high-cost state.

It's not as if the jobs measurement that triggers the wage freeze is outdated or antiquated. It was picked four years ago. And while it's easy to blame President Trump for triggering an increase in gas and diesel prices that is hitting every American's pocket book, New York is just as much to blame for policies that drive up the price of turning on a light switch in the morning or turning on your furnace on a cold autumn morning. Hochul has paid a lot of lip service to affordability over the past year. She's done little to actually deal with the root causes of the state's affordability crisis.

For every person who is counting on a minimum wage increase to help deal with the high costs their elected officials have helped create, there are businesses on the other side of the equation struggling under the weight of those ever-increasing wages. Their response is to increase prices as much as they can to cover the increases, further driving up prices. Tying the minimum wage to inflation creates an ever-inflating cycle that was only to be broken if the state's economy showed signs of weakness. Now, Hochul is asking her Democratic Party allies to change the way we measure economic weakness the first time the measures Democrats chose didn't deliver the result they wanted. Rather than live by the rules Hochul and Democrat lawmakers created, their solution is to change the rules to get the result they want. If only life was that simple for those of us living in New York state.

Everybody is struggling right now. We wish the solution was as simple as increasing the minimum wage every year – but we know from the past two years of minimum wage increases that simply increasing the salary floor isn't doing much to fix the economy. Those who were struggling before yearly minimum wage increases are still struggling.

Tinkering with how employment is measured will give Hochul and Democrats their yearly minimum wage increases, but it won't fix an economy that is still far too difficult for those actually try to live on the minimum wage.