(NEW YORK) — Nearly half of U.S. states are set to raise their minimum wage at the outset of 2025, boosting pay for millions of workers stretching from California to Maine.
In all, 21 states will raise their wage floors on Jan. 1 in keeping with inflation-adjusted increases or as part of scheduled hikes that take effect at the beginning of each calendar year.
The pay increases will affect about 9.2 million workers, who will gain a combined $5.7 billion over the course of 2025, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, or EPI.
After the wave of wage hikes, Washington will become the state with the highest minimum wage, offering workers $16.66 per hour. Workers in California and New York will enjoy the second-highest wage floor, as both states implement a minimum hourly wage of $16.50.
Pay increases set to take hold in the new year will bring the wage floor to $15 an hour or higher in Washington, D.C., as well as 10 states, among them Delaware, Illinois and Rhode Island. Those areas play host to one of every three U.S. workers, EPI found.
Overall, the states set to raise their minimum wage on Wednesday include: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
The nation’s highest wage floors will take effect in some of the nearly 50 cities and other localities that will impose minimum pay hikes.
Twenty-nine cities in California will see pay hikes, including a $17-an-hour wage floor that will take effect in Oakland. Seven localities in Washington will increase their minimum wage, among them the country’s highest wage floor: $21.10 an hour in Tukwila.
The latest round of pay increases, however, will not affect more than a dozen states concentrated in the South that lack a minimum wage or offer a minimum wage that does not exceed the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.
The last federal minimum wage hike took place in 2009, when Congress raised the pay floor to its current level. When adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage stands at its lowest level since February 1956, nearly 70 years ago, EPI found.
(BERLIN) — Workers for the largest online retailer in the world are planning to go on strike during one of the busiest shopping weekends of the holiday season.
Amazon employees are preparing to protest in 20 countries, including in major cities in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan and Brazil, starting on Black Friday over “labor abuses, environmental degradation and threats to democracy,” according to UNI Global Union and Progressive International, a Switzerland-based global labor union.
Dubbed the “Make Amazon Pay days of resistance,” the strike is scheduled to last from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, the union announced in a press release. Demonstrators are calling for increased wages and for employees to be permitted to unionize.
The strike could lead to delays in holiday deliveries for customers, economy experts told ABC News.
Unions and allied groups around the world are planning to participate, according to UNI Global Union.
Thousands of workers in the German cities of Graben, Dortmund Werne, Bad Hersfeld, Leipzig, Koblenz and Rheinberg will also protest, in addition to hundreds in New Delhi, who are demonstrating to demand fair treatment following the mistreatment of workers during a heat wave in July, the union said.
The Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Citizen’s Action will hold protests in multiple cities across France, and garment workers will also take to the streets in Bangladesh, the union said.
This year marks the fifth annual Make Amazon Pay demonstration, which aims to “hold Amazon accountable around the world” by targeting a busy holiday shopping weekend. In 2023, Amazon represented 18% of the worldwide Black Friday sales, with more than $170 billion in total holiday sales, according to an earnings report released earlier this year.
“Amazon’s relentless pursuit of profit comes at a cost to workers, the environment and democracy,” said Christy Hoffman, general secretary of UNI Global Union. “[Jeff] Bezos’ company has spent untold millions to stop workers from organizing, but the strikes and protests happening around the world show that workers’ desire for justice — for union representation — can’t be stopped. We stand united in demanding that Amazon treat its workers fairly, respect fundamental rights, and stop undermining the systems meant to protect us all.”
Amazon defended its treatment of workers in a statement to ABC News on Thursday.
“This group is being intentionally misleading and continues to promote a false narrative,” Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards said. “The fact is at Amazon we provide great pay, great benefits, and great opportunities — all from day one. We’ve created more than 1.5 million jobs around the world, and counting, and we provide a modern, safe, and engaging workplace whether you work in an office or at one of our operations buildings.”
The company announced earlier this year a $2.2 billion investment to increase pay for fulfillment and transportation employees in the U.S. As a result, the average base wage for these employees is now more than $22 per hour and the average total compensation more than $29 per hour when the value of their elected benefits is factored in, according to the company.
Comprehensive benefits for these employees that begin on the first day of employment include health, vision and dental insurance; a 401(k) with 50% company match; up to 20 weeks paid leave, which includes 14 weeks of pregnancy-related disability leave and six weeks of parental leave; and Amazon’s Career Choice program, which prepays college tuition, according to Amazon.
An earlier statement to ABC News from Amazon stated: “While we’re always listening and looking at ways to improve, we remain proud of the competitive pay, comprehensive benefits and engaging, safe work experiences we provide our teams.”
Amazon workers have been outspoken in recent years about workers’ rights, especially as the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic increased the number of online orders. E-commerce sales in the U.S. increased by $244.2 billion — or 43% — in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, rising from $571.2 billion in 2019 to $815.4 billion in 2020, according to the Census Bureau’s Annual Retail Trade Survey.
In 2022, a worker-led independent group led the first-ever U.S. union at the company, unionizing a 6,000-employee Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York.
While subsequent attempts at facilities in Alabama and New York have failed, efforts have continued.
In June 2023, nearly 2,000 Amazon workers organized a walkout after a mandate to return to the office was issued. In Kentucky, Amazon employees who spoke to ABC News alleged that the company was leading a union-busting campaign to discourage employees from organizing.
Amazon told ABC News last year that the disciplinary action taken by the company at an Amazon facility in Kentucky came in response to infractions of company policy.
“Amazon squeezes everything that it can get, but it changes its behavior depending on its jurisdiction,” James Schneider, communications director for Progressive International, told ABC News this week. “Let’s say, in Sweden, it engages much better at how it operates with trade unions. But in the U.S., it engages in union busting.”
A 2022 report by the United Nations’ International Labour Organization found that post-pandemic inflation and the rising cost of living have been decreasing the value of minimum wage globally.
The rise of inflation has paved the way for collective action, experts say. (Starbucks was also part of the 2022 union resurgence.)
“Amazon is everywhere, but so are we. By uniting our movements across borders, we can not only force Amazon to change its ways but lay the foundations of a world that prioritizes human dignity, not Jeff Bezos’ bank balance,” said Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, Progressive International’s co-general coordinator.
(NEW YORK) — Throughout the country, once bustling business districts have turned into ghost towns. The pandemic has shown that many jobs can be done remotely. Now some major U.S. cities are breathing new life into empty office buildings by converting them into housing. Notable cities that are part of this trend include New York, Austin, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Boston.
The office vacancy rate is 20.1% in the U.S., according to Moody’s. That’s a 30-year high, with more than 900 million square feet of office space empty — enough to fill New York City’s One World Trade Center 300 times.
Amazon, Citigroup, Walmart, and UPS are among the major companies now requiring employees to spend more time in the office. Some companies are pulling out all the stops to entice workers back. Amenities may include massage rooms, health care services, and on-site personal gyms.
However, most experts agree that hybrid and remote work is here to stay. “Companies don’t need office space in the way that they needed office space 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago,” Evan Horowitz, executive director of The Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University, said. “Remote work has just transformed that landscape.”
Major cities across the country, including Boston, Austin, and Chicago, are seeing office vacancies at or near record highs. In San Francisco, more than 22% of offices are currently empty, a significant increase from about 9% in 2019.
Some cities are now at risk of falling into what is known as the “economic doom loop.” High vacancy rates can cause property values to plummet, decreasing tax revenue. This decrease in revenue affects funding for essential services such as schools, police and sanitation, ultimately making these cities less desirable places to live.
Horowitz says Boston is more vulnerable to falling into an “economic doom loop” than other major cities because of its unique s tax structure.
“Boston is closer to crisis mode than other cities because it is so dependent on taxes from commercial real estate, twice as dependent as virtually any other city in the country,” Horowitz said. The loss of commercial tenants is having a ripple effect on area businesses.
When Dave Savoie bought his favorite bar and grill, Silvertone, in 2016 he said it was like a dream come true.
The downtown Boston establishment was popular with the business crowd. Office workers made up 50% of Savoie’s customers, but all that changed with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I used to call them suits,” Savoie said. “You know, the office guys, the finance guys. And this was their place. [Now] they work from home. If people come to the city now, they work a maximum three days a week.”
It proved too much for Silvertone and, after 27 years, eight of them under Savoie’s ownership, the bar announced “last call” in May.
Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu, who is up for reelection next year, is taking steps to address the situation. She is implementing tax breaks and zoning changes to transform unwanted office space into much-needed housing.
“We have about 500 housing units that are now in the pipeline to be converted out of formerly vacant office buildings,” Wu told ABC News. “We’re taking city buildings like libraries that need renovations and adding housing on top of that and making it faster than ever before through zoning and other city regulatory processes to get your building built and to get those shovels in the ground. The more that downtown is a residential, thriving, busy neighborhood, just like every other one of our neighborhoods, the more everyone benefits.”
The idea is that business districts will be reimagined as vibrant 24/7 neighborhoods that seamlessly blend work, living, dining and entertainment. This holistic approach aims to create a dynamic community where daily life and work coexist, fostering a rich, interconnected lifestyle.
“There are lots of ways to build a vibrant downtown that doesn’t involve the central role of office buildings,” Horowitz said. “It could be apartments, it could be lab space. There are lots of other things you can do with land that makes people want to go downtown and enjoy themselves.”
Many cities are already converting office space into housing, with Cleveland leading the way — 11% of its office inventory is currently undergoing this transformation. Similar projects are also taking place in Cincinnati, Houston, and New York, where the iconic Flatiron office building is set to be transformed into luxury condominiums. “This is a challenge that’s affecting every city in America,” Wu said. “And in Boston, we’re showing that it’s also an opportunity.”
That “opportunity” is something David Greaney is seizing on. At a time when many real estate investors are looking to sell their office buildings, Greaney and his firm Synergy are buying them up, at a deep discount. Synergy currently owns 35 properties in the Greater Boston area – four of them were bought in just the past 12 months.
Greaney says the worst is over in terms of office vacancies, and he is positive about the future of cities. “The great thing about cities is that cities evolve, and I certainly think that our cities will evolve,” Greaney said. “You may see more residential uses, more hospitality or institutional uses, but the office component of downtowns, I believe, will continue to be a very big factor.”
Working out of one of the same buildings Greaney recently bought, small business owners and brothers Michael and Emilio Ruggeri are betting on a comeback for Boston’s downtown.
For three decades they have been serving breakfast and lunch to the office crowd at their Archie’s NY Deli. Office workers accounted for nearly 80% of their business pre-pandemic, but that number has since dwindled to about 50%.
“We’ve been doing more deliveries,” said Emilio Ruggeri. “The construction guys have actually kept us going.”
They’ve also reduced their staff, trimmed their menu and shortened their hours to make ends meet, confident that things will turn around.
“I’m an eternal optimist,” said Michael Ruggeri. “The buildings are way too expensive to just stay empty. Someone’s going to take over the space, so we’re hopeful.”
(WASHINGTON) — As former President Donald Trump declared victory in the U.S. presidential election early Wednesday, shares of his media company, Trump Media & Technology, surged about 34% to about $45.49 in pre-market trading.
With U.S. markets yet to open, early indicators appeared to show Wall Street’s bullish view of a second term for Trump. As votes were still being, Dow futures were up, the U.S. dollar was strengthening and international markets were mixed.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures had surged about 2.9% by 6 a.m. in New York, having risen briskly from the 1.7% gain they had logged when former President Donald Trump took the stage in Florida at about 2 a.m.
S&P 500 futures traded up about 2.2% early Wednesday, while futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq market were up about 1.7%. Shares of Tesla, the electric-vehicle company headed by Trump ally Elon Musk, spiked about 14.5% in pre-market trades.
Trump owns a 57% stake in the Trump Media, which trades under the DJT ticker and is the parent of social media startup Truth Social. The company late Tuesday reported its third quarterly loss since going public in March.
Markets in the U.S. had surged on Tuesday, led by the Nasdaq’s 1.4% rise.
As Trump walked onto the stage in Florida early Wednesday, the dollar was strengthening. The U.S. Dollar Index traded up about 1.4% at 104.75, touching a level it hadn’t seen since early August. Yields on 10-year and 2-year Treasury bonds had also climbed overnight.
Trading in Asia was mixed Wednesday as international markets digested the election results. Japan’s Nikkei closed up 2.61% for the day, while Shanghai closed nearly flat, slipping just 0.09%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell, dropping 2.23% by the close after opening below Tuesday’s close.
The United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 Index climbed early Wednesday, rising about 1.43% moments after open. Germany’s DAX saw a similar rise, climbing about 1.3% in morning trading.
