As Pennsylvanians observe our dapper rodent weather prognosticator’s forecast, workers across the commonwealth will continue to wake up each day faced with the same reality we’ve known for 16 years now — we still have a $7.25 per hour minimum wage. As legislative efforts to raise it stall year after year, we commiserate with Phil Connors and his predicament in the 1993 film “Groundhog Day,” but we’ve been stuck in a 5,600-plus-day time loop and we’re still counting.

Thirty states have raised their minimum wages since 2009 when the federal minimum wage was last set. Pennsylvania is behind the times and sits among a quickly shrinking list of states who haven’t addressed this glaring problem. Neighboring states New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware have significantly increased their minimum wages since 2009 — all pay $15 per hour or above.

Twenty states, including our border neighbors New York, New Jersey and Ohio have tied their minimum wage to inflation so their workers are guaranteed an inflation-resistant wage in the future. In Pennsylvania, however, workers have watched the cost of housing, food and health care soar without a minimum wage increase or any similar protection against inflation.

As the festivities wrap up at Gobbler’s Knob and the last echoes of the “Pennsylvania Polka” drift off into the distance, the 5,600 year-round residents of Punxsutawney will return to business as usual. Online job boards for the town and the surrounding area are peppered with listings offering $8, $11 and $12 per hour, an ordinary sight across many Pennsylvania counties, but illegally low in much of the country. These wages are closer to the poverty wage than they are to the living wage for Jefferson County.

A minimum wage increase would benefit more than just the 870,000 Pennsylvania workers who earn below $15 now, and let’s face it: at this point, $15 an hour is a compromise minimum wage. The Economic Policy Institute called for a nationwide $17 minimum wage in 2023 and Pennsylvania lawmakers introduced a $20-per-hour minimum wage proposal in 2024, but the House ultimately passed legislation that would have raised the state minimum to $15 per hour by 2026. Due to inaction in the Senate, our minimum wage remains unchanged.

The covid-19 pandemic upended our world and sent shock waves through our economy that persist as ripples today. As employers struggled to fill low-pay positions when the risk of contracting covid-19 was highest, the working poor in Pennsylvania saw a pay bump bigger than they’d seen in decades. But as too many families still know, this market-forced pay increase was still far from enough to help them catch up, let alone help them get ahead. While Pennsylvania’s legislators received an automatic 3.4% raise to kick off 2025 — lawmakers’ salaries have been automatically adjusted for inflation each year since 1995 — working families struggle to stretch already bare-bones budgets as the cost of necessities rises.

Workers who would benefit from a minimum wage increase are the foundation of industries that serve all of us. They are the backbone of our economy. They work in restaurants and retail stores, in cleaning services and salons, they care for our sick, and we trust them to keep our children safe. They shouldered a disproportionate burden of the pandemic, and their work is critical in the best of times and the worst of times — in the six more weeks of winter or the times of early spring.

Raising the minimum wage is not an act of charity, it’s a practical necessity. Our low minimum wage suppresses the pay for nearly a million workers in the commonwealth and makes Pennsylvania less competitive in our region and nationally. Although Pennsylvania state senators have failed to pass legislation to address this issue — like Phil Connors and his ever-repeating day in Punxsutawney, they too have a chance to redeem themselves. Will 2025 be the year we finally break out of this time loop, or will we continue to relive the mistakes of our past?

Claire Kovach is a senior research analyst at the Keystone Research Center, where Yomarilis Gueits Rodriguez is a research intern.

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