RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia's minimum wage will increase to $12.41 per hour on New Year's Day 2025. Marking a slight increase from the commonwealth's existing minimum of $12 per hour.
The scheduled Jan. 1 increase comes after lawmakers in the Virginia General Assembly spent the earlier part of this year trying to pass a larger increase. Despite passing both the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed the law in March, which would have raised the minimum wage to $13.50 per hour for 2025 and $15 per hour for 2026.
In his veto, Youngkin said that he believed that business owners should have the bottom line in deciding when to increase wages, also claiming the law unfairly prioritized Northern Virginia over the rest of the state.
"The free market for salaries and wages works," Youngkin said in his veto. "... Implementing a $15-per-hour minimum wage mandate may not impact Northern Virginia, where economic conditions create a higher cost of living, but this approach is detrimental for small businesses across the rest of Virginia."
Instead, the smaller wage increase is a result of a law passed in 1975 that mandates the commonwealth to adjust the state minimum to adjust to the Consumer Price Index - Urban, a number calculated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, after analyzing the cost of food, housing, clothes, transportation and medical care among other good and services in urban areas.
The Virginia Department of Labor has explained that since the Consumer Price Index published an annual increase of 3.4% in 2023, that meant that the $12-per-hour minimum wage would also have to increase by 3.4%.
"This calculation equals $12.41," Virginia's Department of Labor said in August.
Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D - Portsmouth) told the Associated Press in March that without the governor's veto the proposed minimum wage increases of $13.50 and then $15 would have, “a standard that would affirm our commitment to the dignity of labor and the belief that everyone deserves a fair shot at economic stability.”
The last time the minimum wage increased in Virginia was on Jan. 1, 2023, before then the Virginia minimum wage was $11 per hour.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. The state with the highest minimum wage currently is Washington State at $16.28 per hour.
