Powell: Connecticut’s minimum wage increase indicates worsening poverty

Connecticut’s minimum wage, having been indexed to inflation since 2019, rose to $16.94 per hour this month and was celebrated by Governor Lamont and state Labor Commissioner Dante Bartolomeo.

The governor contended that the increases have not impaired business conditions as was feared when they began. But Connecticut’s business conditions are poor. The state lags most other states in economic growth, and raising the minimum wage discourages many small businesses.

Indeed, Commissioner Bartolomeo’s celebration of the minimum wage increase actually implied severe weakness in both the economy and the state’s workforce. “This is not just something for teenagers,” the commissioner said of the minimum wage. “This is not just an after-school job.” The minimum wage, she said, is disproportionately earned by women of color, and “this is how they support themselves and their families.”

If Connecticut really has so many people trying to support themselves and even families on minimum-wage jobs, then many people have reached adulthood without acquiring substantial job skills, or else the state’s economy is producing too many menial jobs and not enough better-paying jobs requiring skills.

Or the problem may be both. And when the minimum wage goes up, inflation quickly nullifies it anyway, in part because the people advocating higher minimum wages, like the people in charge of government, don’t care much about inflation.

Connecticut’s increasing dependence on the minimum wage is an indication of worsening poverty. While politicians are chattering about “affordability,” most of the solutions they have proposed don’t address affordability at all — [they] don’t address reducing the cost of living.

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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. He worked for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut, and its predecessor weekly newspapers in Rockville and South Windsor from 1967 to 2023, 18 of those years as editorial page editor and 44 as managing editor. He long has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information. He can be reached at cpowell@cox.net.