NEBRASKA- A petition drive was announced Monday that would let Nebraska voters decide whether the state’s minimum wage should incrementally increase from $9 to $15 an hour by 2026.

Raise the Wage Nebraska, composed of a long list of organizations and two Democrats in the Nebraska Legislature, launched the effort to get the issue on the ballot in 2022.

Gradually increasing the minimum wage in Nebraska, they argue, will help middle- and working-class people and start to close racial and gender pay gaps.

“The context in which all of that sits is an economic reality where things are getting much more expensive, and wages are staying stagnant,” said Ken Smith, Nebraska Appleseed’s economic justice director. “The cost of housing and child care and food are all going up, but people aren’t taking home any more money than they were in years past.”

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour hasn’t increased in more than a decade. Thirty states and Washington, D.C., have minimum wages higher than that — including Nebraska.

Nebraska’s is higher because voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative in 2014. After that measure passed, the state’s minimum wage increased from $7.25 an hour to $8 an hour in 2015, then to $9 an hour in 2016, where it stands today.

“Nebraskans have previously made their voices heard on this issue and voted to increase the minimum wage when the Legislature wouldn’t,” Smith said. “And I think that’s where we find ourselves again today.”

Under the ballot language provided by Nebraska Appleseed, state law would be amended so that the minimum wage would bump up by $1.50 each year, starting in 2023.

It would rise from $9 an hour to:

$10.50 an hour on Jan. 1, 2023.

$12 an hour on Jan. 1, 2024.

$13.50 an hour on Jan. 1, 2025.

$15 an hour on Jan. 1, 2026.

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