Arizona’s and Tucson’s minimum wages will go up in January

“Every year, this is just one of several cost increases our employers are absorbing,” he said. “And it’s simultaneously along with health insurance premiums.”

There’s also commercial rent as well as the cost of workers’ compensation insurance.

“And none of these show up in isolation,” Seiden said.

But there also are pressures on workers — the people who the 2006 law is designed to help — as the new inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.

Energy costs are up more than 16%, driven largely by gasoline prices up 27.4% since last year. Electric bills are up by 3.8%, along with a 3% increase in housing costs, a 2.7% increase in grocery costs, and a 2.5% boost in costs for medical care services.

“Our employers aren’t debating whether employees should be paid well,” Seiden said. Given the competition to find qualified workers in many communities, most companies already are paying above the minimum, he said.

But it was Seiden’s organization on the front lines in 2026 in opposing the 2006 initiative crafted by Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) that set the state minimum at $6.75 an hour. Prior to that, employers had to pay only the federal minimum of $5.15.

The Arizona law also provided for inflation-indexed adjustments, something missing from federal law.

It takes an act of Congress to boost the federal minimum wage, which hasn’t changed from $7.25 an hour since July 4, 2009.

But even with built-in inflation in the Arizona law, the wage changes proved too slow for LUCHA. In 2016, the community advocacy organization got voters to boost the figure immediately to $10 an hour, with future increases — including the new one that will take effect Jan. 1 — tied to inflation.