Montgomery County Minimum Wage Increase Effective July 1
The minimum wage in Montgomery County will increase on July 1. The amount of the increase depends on the number of employees in a business.
Minimum wage for employers with 51 or more employees will rise to $13 per hour, while employers with 50 or fewer employees will see the minimum rise to $12.50 per hour. Employees 18 and under who work less than 20 hours per week are exempt from the rate.
This increase is due to Bill 28-17, which was signed into legislation in 2017. The Bill ensures that every July 1 until 2022, Montgomery County minimum wage is incrementally raised, until it eventually reaches $15 per hour.
The table below details the incremental increases to minimum wage.
| Effective Date | Large Employer | Mid-sized Employer | Small Employer |
| July 1, 2019 | $13 | $12.50 | $12.50 |
| July 1, 2020 | $14 | $13.25 | $13 |
| July 1, 2021 | $15 | $14 | $13.50 |
| July 2 2022 | $15 + CPI-W | $14.50 | $14 |
CPI-W = Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers
Learn more about the minimum wage here.
What’s better than raising the minimum wage? Reducing rents! Why? Because:
(1) Nobody says lower rents would force employers to cut staff!
(2) Nobody says lower rents would feed into higher prices for the poor!
(3) When you allow for income tax and withdrawal of welfare, a dollar *saved* is worth much more than a dollar *earned* (google “EMTR” and “cliff effect”).
(4) By definition, the benefit of lower rents isn’t competed away in higher rents — as a rise in wages would be. Landlords might even try claw back the *gross* increase in wages, not allowing for the EMTR.
(5) Lower rents mean lower barriers to JOB CREATION. Jobs can’t exist unless (a) the employers can afford business accommodation, and (b) the employees can afford housing within reach of their jobs, on wages that employers can pay.
And how do we reduce rents? Impose rent control? NO!! That makes it less attractive to supply accommodation. But a tax on vacant lots and unoccupied buildings makes it less attractive NOT to supply accommodation! A vacant-property tax of $X/week makes it $X/week more expensive to fail to get a tenant, and thereby REDUCES, by $X/week, the minimum rent that will persuade the owner to accept a tenant. Better still, the economic activity driven by *avoidance* of that tax would broaden the bases of other taxes, allowing their rates to be reduced, so that the rest of us would pay LESS tax!