Minimum Wage Hike to $14 Arrives on July 1
Photo Credit: Jim Vallee | Adobe Stock
Inflation adjustments for Alaska’s minimum wage are suspended, but the wage is rising anyway at a rate that outpaces price increases. Because of a ballot initiative that passed at the November 2024 election, the $13 per hour minimum that took effect on July 1, 2025, rises on July 1, 2026 to $14 per hour.
That 7.6 percent raise beats the 4.3 percent increase in the consumer price index in Anchorage, which would’ve been the basis for an automatic annual adjustment in January.
On the Way to $15 per Hour
Another voter-approved wage hike is in store next summer, rising to $15 on July 1, 2027. Thereafter, automatic inflation adjustments resume on January 1, 2028.
The federal minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour, unchanged since 2009, and twenty states use that level. Workers in Alaska are entitled to the higher state-mandated minimum. Twenty states have a higher minimum wage than Alaska.
Current Issue
June 2026
The Alaska minimum wage applies to all hours worked in a pay period, regardless of how the employee is paid—whether by time, piece, commission, or otherwise. All actual hours worked in a pay period multiplied by the Alaska minimum wage is the very least an employee can be compensated by an employer unless the employer can clearly show that a specific exemption exists.
Tips do not count toward the minimum wage. Further, under Alaska law, public school bus driver wages must be no less than twice the current Alaska minimum wage. Also, certain exempt employees must be paid on a salary basis of not less than twice the current Alaska minimum wage based on a forty-hour work week.
Local jurisdictions may impose their own minimum, and a group in Nome is organizing a petition to double that city’s wage floor. Students at Nome’s ANSEP Acceleration Academy formed the Nome Living Wage for All Alliance and collected signatures to raise the state-mandated $13 per hour to $25 per hour for local workers.
According to the proposition, the minimum wage would phase in for large companies operating in Nome by 2029 and for small businesses by 2032. One large employer, Alaska Commercial Company, already offers $20 per hour for cashiers, stockers, and clerks, which is a bit more than those positions might earn in Alaska’s urban supermarkets.
Sponsors submitted their petition on May 21, and the city is reviewing it for the minimum of 108 valid signatures to put it on this fall’s local ballot.
