The city of Denver’s hourly minimum wage will rise to $19.29 on Jan. 1, up 48 cents, the city announced Thursday.
The 2.56% pay raise from $18.81 for the city’s lowest-paid workers makes the city’s minimum wage one of the highest in the nation. Cities including Seattle, currently at $20.29, and West Hollywood, at $19.65, have been higher and also are set to increase next year. A few smaller cities in Washington state are above $20 an hour.
The pay raise is part of the city’s commitment “to doing everything we can to make Denver more affordable,” Mayor Mike Johnston said in a statement.
But it’s also due to the city adopting its own local minimum wage, which was added to the municipal code in 2019. It rises each year as long as there’s inflation in the Consumer Price Index.
Local governments in Colorado were allowed to adopt their own wage minimums after House Bill 1210 passed in 2019, and Denver was right there to make it happen to help its lowest earners deal with higher housing costs and other expenses.
Since 2019, Denver’s hourly minimum wage went from $11.10 an hour to today’s $18.81, a 70% of $7.71 more per hour. High inflation after the pandemic also pushed wages higher in 2023, when the minimum wage increased 9%.
The fast ramp up was a challenge for the local business community, and still is, according to the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, which provides support to local businesses on compliance and annual regulatory changes.
“Employers want to pay competitive wages and invest in their people, but policy must reflect economic realities,” said Leslie Oliver, the chamber’s vice president of external affairs, in an email. “Many Colorado businesses are facing compounding challenges — from inflation and regulatory burdens to shifting customer behaviors and a downtown that hasn’t fully recovered.”
There’s also the ripple effect of adjusting pay scales higher for all other employees, as well, and that’s often felt the most in service industries like retail and the restaurant business.
“While it may not sound like a lot, the 2026 increase will cost local businesses thousands of dollars at a time when every single penny counts,” said Sonia Riggs, president of the Colorado Restaurant Association, in an email. “Across-the-board costs have never been higher, and menu prices can’t keep pace or people will dine out even less than they are right now.”
Approximately 50,000 workers in Denver County will be impacted by the local minimum wage adjustments, according to a city spokesperson who pulled the data from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics 2024 report.
Not just Denver. More Colorado wages on the rise
Colorado’s minimum wage will also rise next year, though no official announcement has been made. But based on how the state calculates the increase, using the change in the Consumer Price Index for urban workers, the statewide minimum wage should rise 2.3%, or 34 cents to $15.15 an hour. The state’s current minimum wage is $14.81.
Three other communities have also adopted their own minimum wage.
Two years ago, the city of Edgewater and Boulder County increased their minimum wage while the city of Boulder did so this year.
The areas set minimum wages a few years into the future to help local businesses plan for the annual increases.
In Boulder, the city’s minimum wage is scheduled to increase to $16.82 an hour, from the current $15.57. Boulder County will increase to $17.99, from $16.57. And Edgewater’s will hit $18.17, from $16.52.
Minimum wage in the United States is still $7.25 an hour, unchanged since 2010.
The lower minimum wage: Tipped minimum
Workers who earn tips, however, can be paid $3.02 less than the local minimum wage.
That’s called the tipped credit and applies statewide. It allows employers to offset how much they pay tipped workers by $3.02 — but only if a worker earns at least $3.02 in tips. Otherwise, the employer must pay them the full local minimum wage.
The state’s hourly tipped-minimum wage is currently $11.79 in Colorado and $15.79 in Denver.
An effort backed by the restaurant industry to change the tip credit law this year had mixed results. Dozens of restaurant owners testified how the cost of operating a restaurant in Denver especially was having dire economic results, with closures announced regularly.
The original bill would have increased the tip credit in areas where minimum wage is higher than the state’s, thus reducing current pay for tipped workers in Denver, Boulder, Edgewater and Boulder County.
Worker advocates protested and House Bill 1208 was later passed but required local governments to change their tipped credit if they so chose.