Illinois Senate Debate on Raising the Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour

State Capitol, February 7, 2019 – For better or worse, the State of Illinois is on its way to setting a minimum wage of $15 per hour. That’s roughly $30,000 a year for a full-time job.

The current minimum wage is $8.25 an hour. The cost of raising the minimum wage is not limited to employers, as the state’s universities have minimum wage workers, as do local government. Those additional dollars, as well as suport services for those workers at taxpayer funded nonprofits, at taxpayer subsidized nursing homes, will have to pickup the additional cost of the workers going from an annual expense of approrimately $17,000 per full-time employee, to an annual expense of $30,000 annually for minimum wage employees, come 2015.