First increase will take effect January 2020
by Capitol News Illinois
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (February 21, 2019) – On Tuesday, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a bill to raise Illinois’ minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, declaring his first major legislative victory “a time to celebrate.”
“For nine years there were many forces that were arrayed against giving a raise to the people who work so hard to provide home care for seniors, childcare for toddlers, who wash dishes at the diner, and who farm our fields,” Pritzker said. “Today is a victory for the cause of economic justice.”
Illinois Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford, a Maywood Democrat who ushered Senate Bill 1’s passage through the Senate, said Pritzker “got done in 30 days” what she has been trying to accomplish for 10 years.
Lightford has sponsored several minimum wage increases since 2010, when Illinois’ minimum wage last saw an increase of 25 cents to the current rate of $8.25.
Pritzker, Lightford, and Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia called the bill a compromise between business and labor interests, but Republicans blasted the effort in a news release shortly after the signing.
Criticism
“This is only the beginning of J.B. Pritzker’s war on taxpayers and small business,” Illinois Republican Party Chairman Tim Schneider said in a statement. “Nearly doubling the minimum wage will destroy entry-level jobs, raise prices for consumers, and bust budgets at every level of government.”
The Illinois Retail Merchants Association and the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association have openly criticized the fast-tracked passage of the bill as well.
The rollout of the increase will begin in January 2020, when the wage goes from $8.25 to $9.25 before hitting $10 on July 1. From 2021 to 2025, the wage will see a $1 bump every January until it levels off at $15.
Accommodation
Toia praised the bill for maintaining a tip credit which allows employers to pay tipped workers 60 percent of the minimum wage if tips make up the other 40 percent.
A training wage for teen workers is also included in the bill, allowing employers to pay 50 cents to $2 less than the regular minimum wage over the six-year rollout to workers under 18 years of age who work fewer than 650 hours for an employer in a calendar year.
Small businesses with less than 50 full-time equivalent employees will also be able to take advantage of an income tax credit which allows employers to keep 25 percent of the increased money paid to minimum-wage workers from the previous year.
The 25 percent credit will decrease by 4 percent each year, leveling off at 5 percent for two years and extending an extra year for businesses with five or fewer full-time equivalent employees.
Infusion
Lightford said an added benefit for business is the infusion of more money into the economy for those most likely to spend it.
“I want to put a little shout out to all the little boys and girls whose parents get up when they’re still sleeping…so they can have a roof over their head and make them happy,” she said. “I’m just hoping that they’re able to take their little children to catch a movie or do something fun, because now the economic engine will be turning.”
Repercussion
But Republicans and business owners said Democrats are overlooking possible repercussions of the bill, including a potential loss of 93,000 to 96,000 jobs in the state, according to the conservative Employment Policies Institute and the National Federation of Independent Business, a small business advocacy group.
Democrats have rebutted the job loss numbers, and Pritzker touted his own business background and pointed to his Wednesday budget address as containing business-growing measures, although he did not offer specifics.
“There are so many other things we need to do, like create jobs in the state, like allow small businesses the opportunity to access capital so they can grow those businesses, like helping us innovate and create new businesses in the state,” Pritzker said. “I understand very acutely the importance of growing the economy.”
“We make no little plans, so stay tuned,” he said.
