Six in Ten New Yorkers Back a $30 Minimum Wage
New findings from the 2026 Cornell ILR Empire State Poll
New York State’s minimum wage is about to stop increasing. A weak summer jobs report triggered an “off-ramp” in state law, so the $16 and $17 hourly rates will not rise on January 1, 2027, even though prices in the New York area climbed 4.5% over the past year. The federal minimum, meanwhile, has sat at $7.25 since 2009.
New Yorkers want something very different. In the 2026 Cornell ILR-CAROW Empire State Poll, released for the first time in a new data brief, 60% of New York adults say the state should raise its minimum wage to at least $30 an hour, about what MIT estimates a single adult needs to cover basic costs here. In New York City, support reaches 75%.
What the poll found
Source: Cornell ILR-CAROW Empire State Poll 2026, Q31, weighted, 2,628 respondents. Margins of error and sample sizes are in the full brief.
- A statewide majority. 60% of New Yorkers say yes and 40% say no (margin of error ±2.6 points).
- New York City leads. Support is 75% in the city and 49% in the rest of the state. The Bronx is highest at 88%, followed by Manhattan (75%), Brooklyn (74%), and Queens (69%).
- The City’s lead goes beyond who lives there. City residents are more supportive than their counterparts elsewhere in every group we examined, including Republicans (59% vs. 30%) and homeowners (62% vs. 36%). Even after accounting for age, gender, race, education, income, housing, and party, living in NYC adds about 9 points.
- Individuals closest to the wage floor want it raised the most. About eight in ten young adults, renters, and New Yorkers with family incomes under $30,000 say yes, as do 89% of Black New Yorkers, 81% of Hispanic or Latina/o New Yorkers, and 71% of hourly workers.
- Support held as the bar rose. In 2024, 62.4% of New Yorkers backed a $26 minimum. Today, 60% back $30.
Why it matters
The $30 figure in the poll is not arbitrary. MIT’s Living Wage Calculator puts the living wage for a single adult in New York at $29.89 an hour. A full-time job at $17 covers less than half of a single adult’s living wage in Manhattan and under 60% in the Bronx. And with the 2027 raise on hold, New York City’s $17 minimum now buys 14% less than its $15 minimum did in January 2019.
The findings also land in the middle of New York City’s own push for $30. Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on “$30 by ’30,” and the Raise Up NY coalition is backing Int. 0757, the $30 for Our City Act, in the City Council. Under current law, though, only Albany sets the minimum wage, so the city would first need the Legislature to pass a bill like S3952 letting it set its own. Governor Hochul, for her part, has asked lawmakers to restore a smaller raise in March 2027 when they return in January.
Three in four city residents already back a $30 minimum statewide. That is a strong public mandate for both fights.
Our new data brief, Raising the Floor: New York’s Minimum Wage and the Case for a Living Wage, breaks down this data in several additional ways:
- Results for every age, income, race and ethnicity, party, borough, and region, with margins of error
- How far the NYS and federal minimum wages have fallen behind prices and living costs;
- A guide to the active proposals in Albany, City Hall and Congress; and
Seven implications for lawmakers, from repealing the off-ramp to letting New York City set its own floor.
The 2026 Cornell ILR-CAROW Empire State Poll surveyed 2,629 New York adults online from June 24 to July 8, 2026. Results are weighted, and the margin of error for the full sample is ±2.6 points.
