By: Yereth Rosen, Alaska Beacon

Starting next week, Alaska’s lowest-paid workers will be entitled to more money.

On July 1, the state’s minimum wage will rise to $14 an hour, a $1 bump from the current level. The increase is the result of a voter-approved ballot initiative that mandated paid sick leave, as well as stepped-up minimum wages.

The first increase took pay up to $13 an hour last year, and next year, the minimum wage is scheduled to rise to $15 an hour. In subsequent years, the state’s minimum wage is to rise with the inflation rate, under the voter-approved initiative.

Salaried workers are also covered by the minimum wage increase. Under state reuglations, minimum pay for salaried workers, with some exceptions, must be at least twice the hourly minimum wage, based on a 40-hour workweek.

Just how many workers will be affected by next week’s mandated pay increase is unclear.

Dan Robinson, research chief at the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, believes that there will be relatively few people affected by the change.

“This will not change very much because the situation for workers for a while now has been that employers have had to pay higher wages,” Robinson said.

Even a $14-an-hour wage for what are normally low-paid jobs was not high enough for many employers to attract workers, he said.GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.SUBSCRIBE

That is not because of any boom in available jobs in Alaska. The state’s picture is static, Robinson noted. Gains in private sector employment have been almost exactly offset by losses in government employment, mostly because of federal job losses, according to the state’s most recent analysis.

Rather, it is a product of demographic factors, including continued net-outmigration, meaning more people leaving Alaska than moving into the state. As of last year, Alaska had 13 consecutive years of net-outmigration, a post-World War II record.

Other factors shaping the labor force are Alaska’s aging population and immigration curbs.

Overall, there are “fewer people here seeking work than at other points in our history,” Robinson said. “So it’s kind of a feedback loop.”

The minimum wage increases are expected to affect more people in future years, when they are tied to inflation, he said.

A different perspective was offered in 2024 by the National Employment Labor Project, a nonprofit pro-labor advocacy group.

Prior to that year’s election, the organization estimated that 31,000 people in Alaska would earn more if the state’s minimum wage were raised. More women than men would see the benefits, since women are more likely to be in minimum wage-paying jobs, according to the analysis.

Robinson said the Department of Labor and Workforce Development does not have solid numbers on how many workers are earning minimum wage or anything closer to it.

The department does have information showing pay rates for different economic sectors and job categories, though that is also incomplete because it relies on surveys.

Alaska’s lowest-paid workers, based on those survey results, are in the food preparation and service sector, according to the Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s analysis. Within that sector, median hourly wages range from $12.65 for waiters and waitresses to $25.09 for chefs and head cooks, according to the survey data.

Alaska is among four states and more than two dozen municipalities with scheduled minimum wage increases going into effect in July. And by the end of the year, 88 jurisdictions across the country will have raised their minimum wages, according to the National Employment Labor Project.

As of Jan. 1, 20 states had minimum wages that were higher than Alaska’s $13-an-hour rate, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Next week’s increase in Alaska, along with phased-in increases elsewhere, may change those rankings a bit.

The nation’s highest state minimum wage is in the District of Columbia, at $17.95 an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. There are eight states with either no state-imposed minimum wage or a minimum wage that is lower than $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum, according to the department.