Lynnwood could soon become the latest city in Western Washington to raise its minimum hourly wage above $20 — higher than almost anywhere else in the nation.
Lynnwood’s current minimum wage aligns with the state’s, at $16.66 an hour, set to increase with inflation. But advocates are gathering support for an initiative to raise the wage to $20.24 an hour. The measure would also prevent businesses from retaliating against workers, and ensure companies prioritize giving more working hours to current employees before hiring new ones.
“We have a lot of vulnerable members in our community that are struggling just to get by, and we need to make sure we’re doing our part to advocate on their behalf,” said Lynnwood City Council Vice President Josh Binda, chair of Fair Pay Lynnwood, a committee advocating for the wage increase.
The proposed initiative follows a string of similar efforts that have successfully raised the minimum wage in Tukwila, Burien, Renton and other Puget Sound-area cities in recent years. The initiatives have proved popular with voters, consistently passing by wide margins.
Advocates have long been planning a campaign to raise the wage in Lynnwood, Binda said, and were inspired by the success of a similar initiative in nearby Everett last year, passed with nearly 60% of the vote.
Fair Pay Lynnwood will need to gather around 3,400 signatures to send the initiative to the City Council. Binda is hopeful his colleagues on the Council will approve it. If they don’t, Binda’s group will send the provision before voters, likely in a February 2026 special election.
“We’re preparing for both outcomes,” Binda said.
Other than minor technical changes to align with Lynnwood’s city code, the initiative is largely identical to others passed throughout the region in recent years. It would apply only to businesses with 15 or more employees, or whose gross annual revenue is more than $2 million. The wage increase would have a gradual phase-in period for businesses with fewer than 500 employees.
With increased wages already available in nearby Everett, it’s unclear how many employers in Lynnwood are still paying the state’s minimum wage of $16.66.
A review of recent postings on Indeed.com found some entry-level jobs in Lynnwood already pay more: $19.25 an hour for a Starbucks barista; $17.50 to $18.50 an hour for a Chipotle crew member; $17 to $20.27 an hour for a seasonal associate at Victoria’s Secret.
But many other employers in Lynnwood — including Olive Garden, Old Navy, JD Sports, Marshalls, World Market, Francesca’s and more — advertised entry-level jobs with starting wages of just $16.66 an hour.
That isn’t enough to live on, Binda said. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator, a single adult needs to make about $30.25 an hour to afford the cost of living in Snohomish County.
“Raising it to $20, it’s still not going to be necessarily affordable,” Binda said. “But it’s better than where we are currently.”
Binda said the wage increase is especially important in light of federal funding cuts to government assistance programs like SNAP. It “just creates a better standard of living for people who are living dollar-to-dollar,” he said.
Fair Pay Lynnwood is co-chaired by Mpiima Mugambe, who is running for Lynnwood City Council this year. It has assistance from the Transit Riders Union, the progressive group behind many recent minimum-wage increases. Transit Riders Union general secretary Katie Wilson, who is running for Seattle Mayor this year, spoke at a press conference announcing the Lynnwood initiative last month.
In an interview this winter, Wilson said she thinks minimum-wage campaigns will continue to spread to other cities in the region.
“We’ve heard some interest from some Eastside council members,” she said. “I could see Redmond or Kirkland proposing something like this in the not-too-distant future.”
Lynnwood isn’t the only city that could see a wage hike soon.
In Tacoma, a measure to raise the minimum wage to $20 and increase worker protections will appear on the February ballot. Organizers with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 367, Tacoma for All and the Tacoma Democratic Socialists of America collected sufficient signatures to get the initiative on the ballot. Initially, the coalition had planned for it to appear on the ballot in November, but pivoted after the Tacoma City Council missed the deadline to approve it. In response to the delay, organizers filed a lawsuit alleging that the Council had failed to act with “reasonable promptness and diligence.”
In Olympia, a similar “Workers Bill of Rights” would raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour and enshrine worker protections. It’s slated for the November ballot. The initiative was backed by UFCW local 367 and other labor and activist groups.
Despite their popularity with voters, minimum-wage initiatives consistently generate pushback from business owners who warn that higher wages will force them to raise prices, cut staff and possibly close.
Binda has heard similar concerns in Lynnwood, but said he’s confident the proposal’s carveouts will protect smaller businesses.
“We wanted to make sure that we were also being somewhat accommodating towards the businesses while prioritizing the workers,” Binda said. “You hear a lot of fearmongering when it comes to this stuff, but statistically, what actually happens is worker morale improves … it overall improves business when people feel like they’re being compensated.”
A multiyear University of Washington study of Seattle’s minimum-wage increase, which passed in 2014, found that 99% of businesses survived the wage increase. Many adapted by raising prices or reducing hours. The study found that the wage increase led to a reduction in earning inequality, but that the cost of living continued to outpace wages.
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