Connecticut Doubled Minimum Wage, But Poverty Barely Moved

Connecticut doubled its minimum wage over four years, and the state’s poverty rate barely moved.

That’s the central finding of a report from the Office of Legislative Research, which examined economic outcomes in the state between 2015 and 2024, a period that covers the run-up to and aftermath of Public Act 19-4, the 2019 law that set Connecticut on a path from a $10.10 minimum wage to $15.00 by June 2023. The data is uncomfortable reading for supporters of the law, and it raises real questions about what wage floors can and can’t accomplish on their own.

The poverty rate in Connecticut stood at 10.5% in 2015. By 2024, it had declined to 10.2%. That’s not nothing, but it is far short of the transformative outcomes the law’s backers promised when they pushed it through the General Assembly seven years ago.

Medicaid enrollment tells a similar story. Roughly 935,000 Connecticut residents were enrolled in 2015. That number climbed to more than 1.15 million at its peak in 2023, before falling slightly to just over 1.07 million in 2024. Higher wages were supposed to reduce reliance on public assistance programs. The data suggests the opposite happened.

What supporters promised

The 2019 debate was freighted with ambitious claims. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Sen. Chris Murphy argued that raising the minimum wage would help restore “hope for people to achieve the American Dream” for the millions living in poverty. Then-State Comptroller Kevin Lembo said he “supports raising the minimum wage in order to provide more families in CT with economic stability.”

Advocates made a specific promise about public assistance. Danielle Morfi testified that the wage increase “will alleviate the burden on low wage workers and public assistance programs.” AFL-CIO executive vice president John Brady told lawmakers that “an increase in wages means that workers will more than likely spend that income locally, thus growing our state’s economy.”

Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney of New Haven argued that the then-current $10.10 was “insufficient to allow CT’s low wage workers to live with dignity or any financial security,” and that gradual increases would help, not hurt, the state’s economy.

Those are reasonable arguments. They’re also arguments the data has not validated.

What the law actually did

Public Act 19-4 didn’t just raise the wage. It locked in future increases by tying annual adjustments, starting in 2024, to the employment cost index. Connecticut didn’t set a new floor and walk away. It built a mechanism that keeps the floor rising automatically.

That structure means the policy question isn’t closed. It’s ongoing.

The wage increases were phased in: $11 in 2019, $12 in 2020, $13 in 2021, $14 in 2022, and $15 by June 2023. Each step was real money for low-wage workers. Whether those workers are measurably better off, in terms of poverty rates and public-assistance dependence, is what the Yankee Institute’s analysis of the Office of Legislative Research report puts into serious doubt.

Why this matters for Connecticut towns

For residents in Fairfield County, the practical stakes here aren’t abstract. Property tax revenues, school funding formulas, and municipal services all connect to the economic health of the working population. A flatter-than-expected poverty reduction means more residents likely depend on state and local support, which eventually shows up in budget pressures felt in Greenwich, Stamford, and Bridgeport alike, though in very different ways.

West Hartford, Farmington, and similar suburban towns also watch Medicaid enrollment numbers closely, because the state’s share of Medicaid costs competes directly with education and infrastructure funding in Hartford.

The law’s defenders will argue that poverty and Medicaid enrollment are shaped by many forces, and that’s true. The COVID-19 pandemic distorted enrollment figures across the country. Connecticut’s cost of living is among the highest in the nation, which may compress the real-world impact of a $15 wage in ways that $15 in a lower-cost state wouldn’t face.

But the argument cuts the other way, too. If Connecticut’s cost of living is so high that $15 doesn’t meaningfully move poverty numbers, that’s worth saying plainly rather than treating the law as a settled success.

The General Assembly has not scheduled hearings to formally review the outcomes of Public Act 19-4, and the automatic inflation adjustments will continue raising the wage floor each year regardless of what the economic data shows.