State minimum wage to remain unchanged

Washington's minimum wage will remain at $8.55 an hour next year.

Initiative 688, which Washington voters approved in 1998, requires the minimum wage to increase to account for inflation. Labor and Industries (L&I) announced that because the Consumer Price Index (CPI) decreased about 2 percent during the past year, the minimum wage will not be increasing for the first time since Initiative 688 passed.

Washington still has the highest minimum wage in the nation.

So if the CPI decreased, why didn’t the state minimum wage? L&I spokeswoman Elaine Fischer, was quoted in yesterday’s Puget Sound Business Journal, the law “doesn’t specify anything about decreasing the minimum wage.”