Part time jobs are essential to living the true teenage life. Going straight to work after a grueling day of school, only to get home at nine pm and have no time to do anything else. Schoolwork gets pushed to the side in favor of working a five hour shift at McDonald’s. But minimum wage in Nebraska has just increased, making those shifts just a little more bearable.
On January 1, 2026, minimum wage increased in the state of Nebraska. During the 2025, the wage was $13.50, but has now been increased to $15.00. Since 2023, the minimum wage has increased by $1.50. Minimum wage is the lowest hourly rate an employee can be paid and it’s typically established by not only federal laws, but also on the state and local level as well. The federal minimum wage is currently set at $7.25/hour, which some states still have as their minimum wage.
While Nebraska has a higher than average minimum wage, this act wasn’t introduced into law until 2023. Under the title of ‘Initiative 433’ and ‘the Minimum Wage Increase Initiative,’ it was introduced onto the 2022 ballot. Voting yes to the initiative supported incrementally increasing the state’s minimum wage from $9.00 to $15.00 by 2026. After 2026, the minimum wage would continue to be annually adjusted based on cost of living index. The initiative passed, with 58% of Nebraskans voting yes.
Once the initiative was put into place, all workplaces that paid below the bar were required to raise their minimum wage to the new standard. If an employer underpaid an employee, the employer could face fines and even criminal charges for the violations. Some jobs didn’t have to adjust their wages at all depending on what their employees were already making. While the minimum wage rising could be interpreted as entirely positive, there are also a few underlying cons to this change.
“A potential bad with this is I could very well see it only benefitting those people that earn under minimum wage,” a local nursing home payroll coordinator and HR assistant Jacob Ward said. “Nobody else will get a wage increase.”
While the wage increase will only go to those that aren’t reaching the $15.00 minimum, it’s predicted that around 30% of employees will be seeing this increase within the coming weeks. This raise can be beneficial to the markets as more people will have more money in their pockets to spend. One employee that will be seeing a wage increase is a local Scooter’s barista.
“It’s good because people don’t have to work insanely long shifts to make a decent paycheck,” she said. “When I first started as a minimum wage worker, it was $10, but now it’s $15, which is definitely a great change to see.”
The minimum wage rising can be considered both a good and bad change implemented at the start of this year. As the year progresses, changes are sure to come to those that are not quite up to the standard of $15/hour. It is illegal to be paid under the minimum wage, reaching out to HR is necessary if a part time job is paying below $15/hour.
