New York City in the United States is pushing a radical bill to raise the minimum wage to $30 per hour (about 44,800 won).
On the 12th (local time), according to AP and Fox, council member Sandra Nurse the previous day formally submitted to the City Council a bold bill that would nearly double the current $17-an-hour minimum wage to $30.
The bill is a key campaign pledge of progressive-leaning New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office in January this year. It is built on the claim that wage increases are the only way out to rescue more than 1 million low-wage workers from crushing prices and poverty.
A closer look at the bill shows not all corporations must raise the minimum wage to $30 at once. The timing of increases is finely differentiated based on corporation size and whether benefits are provided. Large business sites that employ 500 or more workers must raise wages to $20 per hour by 2027. They must then meet the final $30 target by 2030.
Small and midsize business sites with fewer than 500 employees, which have relatively less capital, are given a grace period. They are guided to reach $21.50 in 2028 and $30 in 2032 in stages. The New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) will also automatically adjust the minimum wage annually to reflect inflation. Delivery workers and independent contractors working on digital platforms such as Uber and DoorDash will receive the same protections.
$30 is an exceptionally high figure, rarely seen even when compared with hourly wages across the United States and other major economies. The U.S. federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 per hour (about 10,793 won) since 2009. As of 2026, Korea's minimum hourly wage is 10,320 won (about $6.93), not much different. New York City's target is more than four times higher than the current federal minimum wage.
Behind Mayor Mamdani and progressives' insistence on such a radical figure is New York's unusually high cost of living, even by U.S. standards. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), New York's current $17 minimum wage is far lower than in cities with lower living costs, such as Seattle, Washington ($21.30), or West Hollywood, California ($20.25). Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso said, "New York's cost of living is among the highest in the United States, but the minimum wage lags far behind other cities."
Corporations and small-business groups immediately pushed back hard. New York City has as many as 2.4 million small-business enterprises, and they account for more than half of all jobs in the private institutional sector. They argue that if wages are artificially raised by nearly double, only large franchises with ample capital or entrenched corporations will survive, deepening monopolies and even limiting consumer choice. Tom Grech, president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, said, "Such a steep wage hike is an unrealistic level that small businesses simply cannot afford," calling it "deskbound policymaking that ignores reality."
They argued that the minimum wage system was only a minimal safeguard put in place to prevent child labor exploitation when the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted in 1938, and that it should not be transformed into an absolute tool that fully guarantees the livelihood of all workers.
Economists also worried that a rapid increase in the minimum hourly wage would be followed by dire side effects. The conservative-leaning policy think tank the Heritage Foundation analyzed on the 13th that if the bill passes, it would deliver a massive labor cost shock to corporations and instead produce the opposite effect of pushing low-skilled workers out of the labor market. If corporations unable to withstand the expense increases raise prices for products and services, the burden will ultimately fall heavier on low-income consumers, it noted.
According to the Heritage Foundation, after Seattle raised its minimum wage to $20, the unemployment rate jumped from 3.6% in 2022 to 4.9% in 2025. In California, immediately after raising wages in the fast-food sector to $20, about 18,000 people lost their jobs and related menu prices rose 14.5%. Critics say artificial wage controls that ignore the invisible hand of the market inevitably lead to clear policy failures.
The fierce backlash is highly likely to escalate into large-scale legal battles led by corporate coalitions. Major outlets predicted that associations of small businesses and big-business interest groups are likely to prepare sweeping motions for preliminary injunctions. They are expected to cite infringement of constitutionally protected corporate business rights, procedural illegality in administration, or conflicts between state law and local government ordinance as grounds.
In that case, even if the bill passes the City Council soon, it will be hard to take full effect. If a state court grants corporations' requests for a preliminary injunction and temporarily suspends the policy, the bill will be left in limbo until a ruling on the merits. For this reason, some in local political circles warn that if the confrontation spirals to extremes without compromise and becomes mired in fierce litigation, the entire policy could drift aimlessly without even a $1 increase until the very end of Mayor Mamdani's term.