When it comes to the minimum wage, Michigan has been pushing back against national trends even as its wage rises, including stripping local governments of the ability to set higher wages.
Michigan’s $8.15 an hour minimum wage put it in 11th place in the U.S., behind Colorado’s $8.23, and just ahead of its neighbor and rival, Ohio's $8.10 per hour.
The state’s wage was below national average from 1988, when its wage equaled the federal rate of $3.35, to 1998, when it again equaled the federal rate, then $5.15. Both stayed at that level until 2006, with Michigan’s rate rising ahead of federal increases.
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As of 2014, Michigan’s rate was 90 cents ahead of the federal rate.
The rate in the Wolverine State was slated to increase in steps to $9.25 in 2018.
However, the minimum rate paid to tipped workers was among the lowest in the nation, currently at $3 an hour but it was slated to go to $3.52 by 2018.
Michigan also had a separate rate for 16- and 17-year-olds, at 85 percent of state minimum, or the federal minimum, whichever is greater. Additionally, a “training wage” of $4.25 an hour was paid to workers younger than 20 for the first 90 days on the job.
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One thing Michigan residents won’t see in the foreseeable future is higher wages set in individual cities and towns.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law in June 2015 a bill that prevents local governments — cities, counties, townships, school districts and the like — from setting or regulating wages, benefits, or labor agreements on their own.
Local control has been a target of traditionally limited-government, local-control-oriented Republicans citing the need to keep wages under control to stay competitive.
Michigan’s new law, for example, called the “regulation of employment relationship” in the private sector “a matter of state concern” and outside the authority of local governments.
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