Mamdani unveils ‘$30 by ‘30’ minimum wage push as part of mayoral campaign

Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist from Queens who is running for mayor, wants to raise New York City’s minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030.

He contends that the city needs to be a leader and set a minimum wage that better meets New Yorkers’ needs as the cost of living explodes, straining wallets and driving many from their homes and the city itself. 

The ambitious plan, shared exclusively with City & State ahead of its Thursday release, would involve Mamdani working with the New York City Council to pass a new minimum wage law, incrementally raising the city’s minimum wage – which is currently set at $16.50 – to $30. While the state Legislature has long been the sole governing body in New York setting the general minimum wage for workers in the city, Mamdani and his team contend there are legitimate routes that would give the City Council this authority. 

“When working people have more money in their pocket, the overall economy thrives,”  Mamdani said in an interview. “Right now if you are earning a minimum wage in the city, you simply cannot afford to continue calling it your home. We have to change that.” 

Under Mamdani’s proposal, the city’s minimum wage would increase to $20 per hour in 2027, $23.50 in 2028, $27 in 2029 and $30 in 2030. Starting Jan. 1, 2031, it would automatically increase every year based on either cost of living increases or productivity increases – whichever was higher at the time. Both of those metrics are tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In regards to smaller businesses, which per state law pertains to companies with 11 or more employees, the minimum wage would be phased in over a longer period of time. The idea, however, would be to ultimately get that number to $30. 

As the city faces a once-in-a generation affordability crisis that’s left around half of city households struggling to pay for their basic needs, impacts have been sweeping. A recent survey of 3,000 New Yorkers released by the 5BORO Institute Thursday morning found that 48% of New Yorkers are considering leaving the city in large part because of financial pressures – 61% of whom said they are struggling to pay for their basic needs. In many ways, New York has been a leader in the fight for wage increases – particularly when compared with the federal minimum wage, which has remained stagnant at $7.25 an hour since 2009. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technologyʼs Living Wage Calculator, a living wage for a single person with no children in New York City is currently about $30. In 2016, New York became one of the first states to adopt a $15 an hour wage. And in 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state Legislature struck an agreement to index the minimum wage to inflation, raising it to $16.50 in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County as of January 2025. 

While Mamdani acknowledged this was a step in the right direction, he believes the city needs to go even farther. Affordability has emerged as a major topic in politics over the last year, with incumbent politicians – including New York City Mayor Eric Adams – and their various challengers scrambling to position themselves as “the affordability candidate.” Much of Mamdani’s campaign has centered on lowering costs for working-class New Yorkers. While some ideas are more feasible than others, he’s previously committed to freeze rents for rent-stabilized apartments, proposed eliminating bus fares, universal child care, building 200,000 new “affordable” homes over the next decade, and to open city-owned grocery stores to bring down food costs.

It’s unclear whether the City Council currently has the authority to carry out this latest proposal as historically, the state Legislature has set the minimum wage across the state. Mamdani and his team believe it is possible. The Tompkins County Legislature is currently exploring whether it has the authority to implement a higher minimum wage. Over the summer, the body passed a resolution that asks the state to allow counties seeking to raise the minimum wage beyond the state standard to do so through something in the state’s constitution called the “home rule” principle, which grants local governments the power to make and amend laws within their own jurisdictions. 

A spokesperson for Mamdani pointed to that principle as one way his policy would be possible. If the city encountered any legal obstacles, their administration would work with the state Legislature to clarify the city’s authority – potentially through a piece of legislation of which Mamdani is currently a co-sponsor that would explicitly grant local governments the power to implement a higher level of the minimum wage. Some other municipalities and cities outside of the state currently have this power.  

As for the City Council’s willingness to enact such a change, Mamdani is confident. City & State didn’t reach out to City Council members to gauge interest per the campaign’s conditions of this exclusive report ahead of its official announcement.  

“There’s a lot of interest amongst the existing City Council on taking steps towards making the city more affordable,” Mamdani said. “What they’ve shown time and time again, is they’re willing to take those steps, but they’ve been stymied by a mayoral administration that has shown itself, at best, not interested, and at worst, taking every opportunity to exacerbate this cost of living crisis.” 

Some of the most common arguments against prior pushes to bolster the minimum wage include concerns that doing so would lead to businesses hiring fewer workers and adjusting their prices in light of increased labor costs, thus higher inflation. But other municipalities have already moved to increase their minimum wages to degrees far outstripping where things are currently at within the city. For example, Boulder County, Colorado is on track to reach a $25 minimum wage by 2030. Los Angeles recently passed a new law raising the minimum wage for its tourism workers to $30 per hour in 2028. 

“Too often we are told that fighting for workers is unrealistic, that fighting for workers is a policy that is too ambitious to actually bring to reality,” Mamdani said. “Yet we know this is the bare minimum that New Yorkers deserve at this moment.”