By Hannah Falcon
KY3 TV (Gray Media), January 1, 2025. Also KMOV-TV (St. Louis), KFVS-TV (Cape Girardeau), KCTV (Kansas City), WGEM-TV (Quincy, IL), KAIT-TV (Jonesboro, AR)
A new minimum wage starts Wednesday in Missouri. Effective New Year’s Day, Missouri’s new minimum wage is $13.75 cents per hour. In 2026, it will rise to $15 an hour and then rise each year based on the Consumer Price Index. ...
Nestled in Downtown Columbia, Yellow Dog Bookshop sells new and used books. It’s a small business owned and operated by Joe Chevalier. Chevalier said he competes with large businesses for employees, which is why he wants to pay his employees as much as he can afford.
“Anything you make up by paying people less, you’re gonna lose by having to retrain the people often because they’re gonna leave for better-paid jobs,” Chevalier said.
For this reason, he supports raising Missouri’s minimum wage. Chevalier is not concerned about raising prices. He thinks more money in workers’ pockets will lead to more local spending.
“If we pay workers more, they’ll have more money to spend when you spend it locally,” Chevalier said. ...