Introduction: The governor’s 2026-27 executive budget proposal and remarks included a renewed push to raise the minimum wage in Pennsylvania to $15 per hour. Legislation recently passed by the state House of Representatives would do just that.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
This Policy Brief examines the real per capita income growth for Pennsylvania and the six states that share a border with Pennsylvania: Delaware; Maryland; New Jersey; New York; Ohio and West Virginia. The study covers the period 2010 to 2024. Percentage changes are calculated for two periods: 2010 to 2024 and 2020 to 2024. The 2024 data are the last official figures for real per capita income reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed, and the state House has passed, a measure to raise the Keystone State’s minimum wage to $15 an hour to begin 2029. But a researcher at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy says the detriments of such an increase (if adopted by the state Senate and signed into law by the governor) will outweigh the purported benefits.
Indeed, “dead on arrival” would be the most apropos way to characterize the chances of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed fiscal 2026-27 Pennsylvania budget being adopted by the General Assembly. For it is far more remarkable for the economic fallacies it promulgates than sound fiscal stewardship, concludes an analysis by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy.
