Long before she set her sights on Congress, Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-Glen Ridge) was a key player in the fight for a $15 minimum wage in New Jersey. She’s now taking that same fight to Washington – and thinking even bigger.
This morning, Mejia is introducing a bill to raise the federal minimum wage all the way to $25 an hour, a dramatic increase from the $7.25 it’s been since 2009. The bill, the Living Wage for All Act, is Mejia’s first major legislative effort as a congresswoman; she’s co-leading it with Rep. Delia Ramirez, an Illinois progressive who was a Mejia ally on the campaign trail in this year’s special election.
“We need an economy that reflects the realities of 2026, not one stuck over a decade ago,” Mejia said in a statement. “That’s why I led the fight to raise New Jersey’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. And it’s why I’m proud to partner with Congresswoman Delia Ramirez on the Living Wage for All Act to raise the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour.”
The congresswoman will officially unveil the bill – which has a number of co-sponsors in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, among them Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) as well as outside supporters like the National Education Association and the NAACP – at a press conference outside the Capitol this morning.
New Jersey, like many states (especially Democratic-controlled ones), has a far higher minimum wage than the federal floor, an accomplishment that traces back to Mejia and several of her fellow progressive activists.
In 2016, then-Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a bill raising the state’s minimum wage to from $8.85 to $15, calling it a “really radical increase”; Mejia, then the state director of the Working Families Party, said the decision was “Chris Christie at his worst.” Phil Murphy’s election as governor breathed new life into the movement, and after a year of legislative wrangling, he signed legislation in 2019 that steadily raised the minimum wage to $15 by 2024 (it’s now $15.92 as of the beginning of this year). Right behind the governor at the bill signing was Mejia.
Mejia later went on to work as a campaign staffer for Bernie Sanders, an early proponent of the $15-an-hour movement, before launching her campaign for the 11th congressional district last year. One of her congressional campaign’s key policy planks was a $25-an-hour nationwide minimum wage.
Of course, raising the federal minimum wage even to more modest heights, let alone to $25, will be a tough lift, especially while Republicans remain in power in Washington. Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden) has pushed in recent years for a $17 minimum wage, but his bill to do so has gone nowhere in the GOP-held House.
Back in 2019, House Democrats passed a $15-an-hour minimum wage bill on a largely party-line vote, but it died in the Senate; two years later, when Democrats had regained full control of Congress, the Senate parliamentarian nixed an effort to include a minimum wage hike as part of a Covid relief bill.