Business/Technology Reporter
For the past few years, the city of Denver seemed like the outlier for having the state’s highest minimum wage, which will rise 2.9% to $19.84 on Jan. 1.
Next year, Denver is getting company. The city of Edgewater will match Denver’s minimum, which Edgewater City Council approved in July.
But that approval was to lower what the city of 5,410 residents had anticipated for 2027.
“We were supposed to be at $19.99,” said Dan Maples, Edgewater’s city manager. The ordinance aimed to not exceed Denver’s minimum wage.
New state laws enacted since 2019 to help the lowest-paid workers have given local governments more control of their minimum wage. But as areas hiked up minimums faster than inflation to reflect a truer cost of living, those best-laid plans are needing regular review. That’s been happening as cities and counties consider the impact of changing the minimum wage.
In Boulder, which started paying a higher minimum wage than the state in 2025, the City Council decided in July to take no action on its tipped minimum wage, or the lower amount employers can pay workers who earn tips. A state law passed last year to address the struggle restaurants and other employers have with higher costs, lets local governments decide whether to increase the tip offset beyond the state’s $3.02. An increase would limit the annual inflation-linked pay raise for those earning the tipped minimum wage.
That’s the same for Edgewater. Its City Council will meet Tuesday to figure out what to do with its tipped-minimum wage. It is the only community to take advantage of a new law this year, having increased the tip offset to $4.67.
Boulder County, which began a higher minimum in 2024, hasn’t announced where its minimum wage will land in 2027. It has planned for a 3% increase, which would put its minimum wage at $17.32.
Colorado’s minimum wage is increasing 55 cents to $15.71 in 2027, the state labor department announced this week.
The impact of higher wages
The Denver restaurant industry released a report this year documenting the economic challenges restaurants face with rising costs of food, rent and wages. In the cut of data, it found that coinciding with higher city minimum wages, jobs within the city’s restaurant sector shrunk by 6% while the number of full-service restaurant jobs fell 15% in 2025, compared with the start of 2020.
While there’s an ongoing debate on whether higher minimum wages directly lead to higher menu prices and fewer jobs, the Employment Policies Institute, a right-leaning think tank based in D.C., took a stab at figuring it out. It surveyed 166 economists about the federal minimum wage, which has been at $7.25 since 2009. About 20 states, including Kansas and Utah, are at the federal rate.
“A large majority of them cited job loss as a concern if you raise the minimum wage to $15, $20 or beyond $20. But they also cited things like higher rates of automation, which may turn into job loss in the future,” said Rebekah Paxton, EPI’s research director. “They also mentioned concerns about price increases and the cost of living, specifically for affected workers. And they mentioned making it harder for businesses to operate, which again may not result in immediate job losses, but if a business is under strain for too long, they may decide to close down. And then they’re not employing anybody.”
Menu item prices have increased in recent years. And the food industry has moved to more automation, like giving customers the option to scan a QR code to pull up a menu and order. Some businesses are using robots to deliver food.
Chris Stiffler, a senior economist at the left-leaning Colorado Fiscal Institute, can relate as he bemoaned how expensive a beer and burger have become in Denver. But in looking at food workers’ pay in the city of Denver, there have been big boosts in the bottom 25% of wage earners in the food and restaurant industry.
The bottom 25% of food preparation and serving-related workers in Denver have seen their wages grow 62% since 2019, based on the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
“Real wage growth has been concentrated on the bottom 20%. I would say that has a lot to do with minimum-wage policy because we changed minimum wage policy in 2016 and again in 2020,” he said. “You can see big boosts in the bottom 25% of wages and that’s definitely had a big impact.”
The number of food preparation and serving-related workers in Denver has more than doubled since 2019 to 48,190 last year, though it’s down about 1,000 workers since the peak in 2023, according to state labor data.
While there may be spits and spurts in recent months or the past year, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the number of leisure and hospitality workers and restaurant workers is still higher than it was in 2019 before the pandemic disruptions occurred. Employees in ”restaurants and other eating places” are about the same as prepandemic times. But full-service restaurant workers have declined.
He also looked at fair market rents for Denver and compared the cost with the number of hours a minimum wage earner must work to pay rent. What used to be 34 hours a week in 2016 is now 25 hours, about a 26% decline.
“The affordability of minimum wage compared to rents has become a lot more tenable in the last three or four years,” he said.
And that said, Stiffler agreed that there were other nonminimum wage factors that made rents more affordable. While rents have nearly doubled since 2016, Denver-area average rents are now below what they were in 2022 because of the thousands of new apartment units that have been built, according to the Metro Denver Apartment Association.
Minimum wage increases based on annual inflation does not mean increased affordability, he added, especially if housing prices and other consumer prices increase faster than overall inflation.
“I don’t even know if pegging wages to inflation keeps the minimum wage person even,” he said. “The average consumer pays 33% (for) your cost of housing, but if you’re a minimum wage worker, you’re likely paying 60% of your wages anyway for housing. So even if you peg it to inflation, you’re still not compensating that minimum wage worker fully because they’re paying a lot more for housing.”
Reader poll: Denver minimum wage is higher than readers thought
We asked last week in our reader poll to take a guess — without peeking — at what the city of Denver’s minimum wage currently is. It’s $19.29. While 28.9% picked the right answer, that means 71% got it wrong.
Don’t feel bad. This is pretty common when the minimum wage adjusts every year to align with the change in Denver’s Consumer Price Index. But small businesses that pay the city’s minimum wage better pay attention or face penalties and fines, in addition to making it right with workers. Here’s a list of companies the Office of the Auditor has gone after since 2021 for wage violations, including paying the prior year’s minimum wage.
“Every year, we encounter Denver businesses and workers who are unaware the minimum wage has been adjusted. Denver Labor’s goal is to educate them ahead of time so they prepare for the wage change,” said Michael Brannen, a spokesperson from the auditor’s office. “Often, employers are simply unaware the minimum wage has increased, but they want to do the right thing and will remedy the situation quickly…. Denver Labor’s goal is education.”
You can still take the poll. We’re hoping for more sharable stories about the cost of living in Colorado.
Here you go >> cosun.co/WWwages2026
Sun economy stories you may have missed
➔ Colorado relaunching e-bike rebate lottery for $1,000 off, starting Aug. 24. State officials found millions more dollars for 2,800 vouchers, after the previous popular program sold out >> Read story
➔ Cargill meatpackers in Fort Morgan expected to take another vote on contract they rejected. Workers have been locked out of the beef-processing plant for nearly 85 days but things got worse after union strike pay was reduced. >> Read story
➔ New Colorado rideshare safety provisions take effect. Rideshare companies operating in Colorado will be required to investigate drivers after receiving complaints from riders — including about sexual assault, harassment and stalking — within seven business days or face penalties >> Read story
➔ The last rodeo: Why this bucking stock contractor is hanging up her hat. After years providing bucking broncs and bulls to rodeos in the West, Colorado rancher Kirsten Vold is ready to ride off into the sunset >> Read story
➔ Another lawsuit threatens to upend Colorado’s recycling expansion. Multiple parties now suing over a packaging fee meant to bring curbside-style recycling everywhere in the state >> Read story
➔ Drop in winter spending in Colorado mountain towns has communities cutting budgets. Spending in 18 high country communities dropped to a 4-year low in 2025-26, when visitation numbers fell and snow didn’t. But towns are diversifying economies and showing resilience to bad snow years. >> Read story
Other working bits
➔ CU economists cut job growth forecasts. Job growth has been slower than expected this year causing University of Colorado economists to revise their job growth forecast down to 6,300, or half the number they forecast in December. The midyear 2026 update blamed “new challenges — including geopolitical conflict, higher energy prices and rising inflation,” even as Colorado employment, income and wealth all increased in the first half of the year. The labor force has been shrinking and that’s leading to slower job growth, too, said Brian Lewandowski, executive director of the CU’s Business Research Division at the Leeds School of Business. >> Read report
➔ Denver-area inflation was 3.9% in July. Gasoline and apparel were the two main types of purchases that had double-digit price increases in July for Denver-area consumers, compared with a year ago. That raised our annual inflation to 3.9%, which was higher than the U.S. rate of 3.4%. But as many noted, that was the difference from a year ago. Compared with May, the change in local consumer prices fell 0.7%. Also compared with May, gasoline prices have come down. Fast forward to August and travel company AAA’s gas prices tracker shows a gallon of regular gas in Colorado cost an average of $4.31, up 29 cents from a week ago and up $1.22 from a year ago. >> See Denver’s CPI data, AAA gas prices
➔ Bally’s Black Hawk becomes state’s first casino to organize. As of Wednesday, 110 employees at the Bally’s Black Hawk Casino are a union shop, making them the first casino in Colorado with a recognized union, said Dean Modecker, the secretary-treasurer for Teamsters Local 455. Bally’s had made an agreement with Teamsters to allow workers to forgo a union election as long as the majority of eligible workers joined. The new bargaining unit represents many different jobs at the casino, including bankers, utility workers, restaurant servers, cashiers, maintenance techs, ticket writers and slot floor attendants. >> More
➔ Severance and Timnath business groups uniting — not merging. Instead of winding down the Severance Chamber of Commerce after the departure of its president, neighbors in Timnath agreed to take over. They’re not merging or creating a regional chapter but just sharing certain operating systems and resources, said Dustin Peyser, Timnath Chamber of Commerce co-founder and president, who assumes leadership of Severance.
“The broader question we’re exploring is whether smaller Chambers can gain some of the efficiencies and capabilities of a larger organization without consolidating away the individual communities they’re supposed to represent,” Peyser said in an email. >> Details
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Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara
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