The new year is bringing a new minimum wage to Colorado — a more minimum, minimum wage.
Adjusted for the lower inflation rate, the state’s current hourly minimum will drop today from $7.28 to $7.24, under an order from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
The actual wage rate for most employers will drop only to the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour.
The change marks the the first decrease in any state’s minimum wage since the federal minimum was adopted in 1938.
For tipped workers in Colorado, the minimum goes to $4.22 an hour from $4.26 an hour, which is still above the federal minimum for tipped income of $2.13 an hour.
The minimum wage rate is recalibrated each year based on the Denver-Boulder-Greeley Consumer Price Index, which fell 0.6 percent between the first half of 2008 and the first half of 2009. That was the first annual decline since 1965.
Voters approved an amendment to tie the state’s minimum wage to the yearly cost-of-living index in 2006.
Denver Post staff and wire reports
