Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed legislation that will incrementally increase Virginia’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2028.
“If you work full time in Virginia, you should be able to afford to live in Virginia,” Spanberger said in a statement. “You should be able to keep up with your rent or mortgage, fill your medications, and save for your kids’ futures.”
The legislation codifies the adjusted state hourly minimum wage of $12.77 per hour, effective January 1, 2026, and increases the minimum wage to $13.75 per hour effective January 1, 2027, and to $15.00 per hour effective January 1, 2028.
Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, sponsored this legislation in the Senate and thanked the governor in a statement.
“For too long, hardworking Virginians have been stretching their paychecks to the breaking point — choosing between keeping the lights on and putting food on the table,” Lucas said. “Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is not a gift — it is long overdue justice for the men and women who keep this Commonwealth running every single day.”
Lucas also took this opportunity to criticize her colleagues for supporting data center tax breaks, a key sticking point in ongoing budget negotiations between the House and Senate.
“What I find troubling is that we have colleagues who will fight tooth and nail to hand out tax exemptions to data center corporations — billion-dollar operations that don’t need our charity — but balk at giving a working mother a few more dollars an hour,” Lucas said. “Virginia’s priorities ought to be with its people, not its data centers. I am glad we got this right.”
Del. Mike Cherry, R-Colonial Heights, said the budget negotiations over the data center tax cuts make the process for increasing minimum wage more complicated for localities.
“The governor is mandating that localities pay their employees more, and yet the government won’t tell them how much money they’re going to have to budget with,” said Cherry, who served on the Colonial Heights City Council prior to being elected to the House of Delegates.
“[Colonial Heights] is now in the midst of its budget negotiations,” Cherry continued. “They’re asking their department heads to budget for the next year to figure out what they’re going to need to spend. And yet the locality itself does not have that information from the state in order to start the process of making a budget.”
The General Assembly is scheduled to meet on April 23 to try to complete the budget process. Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, seemed optimistic in an interview with Virginia Scope on Wednesday afternoon that the process will be completed.
“I think everybody’s doing their due diligence and doing a good job,” Scott said. “At the end of the day, we’ll end up where we always end up — with a budget in time.”
However, in a statement on social media Wednesday night, Lucas cast doubt on the prospects of reaching a deal by the special session.
“Earlier this week, I rejected a proposal from the data center industry to close the House and Senate budget gap without ending the sales tax exemption and I doubted the two bodies will agree on a budget in time for the start of the special session,” Lucas wrote.
In addition to raising the minimum wage, Spanberger signed legislation eliminating the minimum wage exemption for farm workers.
“I am signing legislation to support the men and women who power our economy, including so many of the people who keep our agriculture industry strong — and we were proud to work with the Virginia Farm Bureau to strike a balance to protect farm workers and our vital farming industry,” Spanberger said.