No. Pennsylvania’s minimum wage is $7.25, which is the federal level minimum wage.

This rate has been unchanged for the past 10 years, while cost of living has risen more than 13 percent since 2009.

All states surrounding PA have higher minimum wages.

New York is increasing their federal minimum wage to $12.50 by 2020. Ohio, Delaware, and West Virginia have federal minimum wage rates at $8.55, $8.75, and $8.75, respectively. The District of Columbia plans to increase its minimum wage to $15 by 2020, and New Jersey plans to increase its minimum wage to $15 by 2024.

Minimum wage policies vary.

States and cities across the country have minimum wage policies that include either a one-time increase with additional increases tied to increases in costs of living, incremental increases with additional increases tied to increases in costs of living, or one-time increases as needed. Research shows that incremental increases to a higher than federal level minimum wage allows both states and business to adjust more slowly.

Some states have different minimum wage rates or ramp up timelines depending on the size of businesses or whether or not employers provide health benefits.

For example, California businesses with fewer than 25 employees have a delayed schedule to $15 per hour. Arizona exempts all businesses that gross under $500,000. In Nevada, employers who do not offer qualified health benefits pay $8.25 an hour — higher than the federal minimum wage.

Many states also have different higher than federal level minimum wages for tipped employees.

A tipped employee is an employee that engages in an occupation in which he or she customarily and regularly receives more than $30 per month in tips.

More than 50 percent of states who have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum have a lower minimum wage requirement for tipped employees. In Pennsylvania, the tipped employee minimum wage is $2.83, which is above the $2.13 federal minimum wage for tipped employees.

States and municipalities have also typically exempted the following populations from minimum wage requirements: federal employees, babysitters, salespersons, agricultural workers, and people with disabilities. States and municipalities have based exempt populations on some federal exemptions.

New studies covering the recent explosion of minimum wage policies, using improved measurement strategies, find strong evidence that increasing the minimum wage does not lead to a loss in low-wage jobs and in fact does raise incomes.

Increasing the minimum wage can have other positive effects: New research finds increasing the minimum wage leads to a drop in recidivism for former prisoners and a drop in crimes such as property or drug crimes.

Sectors that employ many minimum-wage workers, such as the food service sector, have not been harmed by increased minimum wages. Pennsylvania’s neighboring states all have higher minimum wages, and in their food service sectors, wages have increased and employment has increased faster than in Pennsylvania’s food service sector.

Studies suggest that raising minimum wages can be complementary to public assistance programs, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. This study shows that higher minimum wage increases EITC benefits for families in deep poverty, and the Pennsylvania state administration estimates that raising the minimum wage to $12.25 would recover $100 million in state entitlement costs.

The Center for American Progress reported that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 would reduce spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $4.6 billion. The Economic Policy Institute concluded that increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 would decrease annual government spending on income-support programs and save taxpayers $7.6 billion.

For most employees, working hours do not decrease when minimum wage increases.

Studies of minimum wage increases in cities and states across the United States find consistent evidence that raising the minimum wage increases incomes without reducing hours worked, especially for low-income families. A study in Seattle found that although people working the least number of hours did work fewer hours after an increase in minimum wage, the hourly wages for this group went up enough that their overall incomes remained the same. However, the same study shows that other workers saw an increase in overall wages and no significant decrease in hours.

If the minimum wage were increased by $1.00 per year to a maximum of $12.25: 69,446 Philadelphia residents would benefit immediately from the increase. By 2024, 188,995 Philadelphians — 37 percent of the eligible workforce — would have been affected by the wage increase.

If the minimum wage were increased by $1.30 per year to a maximum of $15.00: Over 77,000 Philadelphia residents would benefit immediately from the increase. By 2024, over a quarter of a million Philadelphia residents — nearly half of the workforce — would be affected by the wage increase.

Increasing the minimum wage will be crucial to 63,000 Philadelphians, ages 20 to 65, who work but currently live in or near poverty.

Source: City of Philadelphia analysis of 2016 American Community Survey data

According to the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Revenue, occupations that typically pay minimum wage include: cashiers; nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides; cooks; retail salespersons; personal care aides; food preparation workers; janitors and building cleaners; childcare workers, laborers and freight, stock, and material movers; security guards; teacher assistants; and housekeeping cleaners — to name a few. There are additional occupations that typically pay minimum wage not listed here.