Nebraska voters appear poised to vote on increasing minimum wage to $15 by 2026

Raise the Wage Nebraska, the organization which previously launched a petition seeking to have Nebraska voters raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2026, announced on July 1, 2022, that it has more than enough signatures to turn in by the deadline. This will place the issue on the general election ballot in Nebraska in November. Let’s examine what this would mean for Nebraska employers and employees if voters approved the measure in November.

Minimum wage increase

On July 1, 2022, Raise the Wage Nebraska announced that it has collected more than 130,000 signatures across the state of Nebraska, well before the July 7, 2022 deadline for submitting all signatures to the Nebraska Secretary of State. According to the group’s spokeswoman, the organization is on track to submit enough required signatures from 38 of Nebraska’s 93 counties, and that it will far surpass the requirement of sub-mitting 87,500 signatures of valid Nebraska voters.

If the signatures are verified (which would qualify the initiative to be placed on the ballot) and if Nebraska voters approve the measure, it would increase Nebraska’s minimum wage gradually over the next three years to the level of $15 per hour in 2026.

The minimum wage would increase from the current $9 per hour to $10.50 per hour on January 1, 2023. Next, it would increase to $12 per hour in 2024, to $13.50 per hour in 2025, and to $15 per hour in 2026. It would then “be adjusted annually thereafter to account for increases in the cost of living.”