Boulder County considers slowing minimum wage increases

Boulder County commissioners are weighing a proposal to slow the pace of minimum wage increases after hearing from farmers and Niwot business owners who say rising labor costs could soon price them out of the county. 

Boulder County’s current minimum wage is $16.57 an hour and is scheduled to rise to $25 an hour by 2030. But at a public hearing on Oct. 14, commissioners considered proposals to revise that schedule in response to what staff described as growing concern from the community, including calls to either slow the rate of increases or pause them entirely.

The county adopted the current wage schedule in 2023, hoping that cities including Boulder, Lafayette, Louisville and Longmont would follow. But only the City of Boulder opted to raise its minimum wage, and it did so on a more conservative schedule. The city’s minimum wage is currently $15.57 an hour, with more modest annual increases. The other municipalities continue to follow the state’s minimum wage of $14.81. This lack of regional consistency, staff said, is another reason the county is reconsidering its approach.

Workers’ advocates pushed back on the potential reductions, pointing out that the current minimum wage remains far below Boulder County’s living wage, which the MIT Living Wage Calculator estimates is $26.18 an hour for an individual with no children. Advocates also cited a presentation from local family resource centers to commissioners during the meeting that reported “surging” requests for rental assistance and a growing reliance on food banks. 

Farmers and small business owners warn of closure

Concerns about the current wage plan came largely from farmers and Niwot business owners, who said they cannot sustain operations under the existing schedule. Several local farmers said they already earn less than their employees some years, and that for some, labor accounts for more than half of their total costs.

“Farms in Boulder County don’t compete with each other,” said Michael Moss, owner of Kilt Farms, at the Oct. 14 hearing. “We compete with farms in Weld, Larimer, Adams County, California and even internationally. We compete with mainline grocery stores like Whole Foods, Kroger and Walmart. When our costs rise beyond what the market can bear, customers will buy food grown elsewhere. If that happens, our farms close.” 

“When farms close,” Moss continued, “We lose more than just one business. We lose jobs. We lose people who steward our open space. We lose the next generation of farmers. We lose fresh, local, organically grown food right here in Boulder County.”

Farmers also requested the county consider allowing more agricultural workforce housing, which could reduce workers’ cost of living without raising wages.

Niwot business owners echoed similar concerns, saying they struggle to compete with businesses just minutes away in Longmont, where labor is cheaper. 

“After two years of hardship and significant job losses in the Niwot community, the continued increases called for in the current ordinance will devastate the small businesses that operate in unincorporated Boulder County,” said Nicholas Little, owner of Noblestar Technologies and a volunteer with the Niwot Business Association. “I don’t want to live in a ghost town.”

Workers struggling to afford Boulder County

Workers’ advocates urged commissioners to hold the line on the current schedule. 

“We need the living wages. The wages that we are currently looking at freezing are nowhere close to that,” said Alejandra Beatty, a representative of the Boulder County Self Sufficiency Wage Coalition. “When Boulder County first passed the local minimum wage ordinance a few years ago, that showed real leadership. You made it clear that the people who make our county work every day — staff our classrooms, care for our elders, prepare our food — should earn living wages and be able to live here.” 

Beatty said many Boulder workers still cannot afford to live in the county. The Colorado Center on Law and Policy’s Self-Sufficiency Standard estimates a family of four needs about $107,000 a year to cover basic expenses in Boulder County. That’s nearly four times the federal poverty level, and more than triple what a full-time minimum-wage worker earns.

“It is hard to put food on the table,” Beatty said, citing rising food and housing insecurity as reported by the family resource centers like Sister Carmen, OUR Center and Emergency Family Assistance Association (EFAA).

“We probably are serving 25% of the needs of the families who are coming to us, and we’re operating at historic capacity,” said Debbie Pope, executive director of EFAA.

Five options under review

County staff presented five possible adjustments to the minimum wage schedule. Commissioners are expected to meet again on Oct. 21 to decide whether to move any of them forward for a first reading on Nov. 20.

Three of the five options propose pausing the current wage schedule:

• Option 1 would pause the 2026 wage at 2025 levels, and launch a new effort to coordinate a regional minimum wage policy with cities in Boulder County beginning in 2027.
  
• Option 2, proposed by the Niwot Local Improvement District Advisory Committee, would freeze the wage at 2025 levels until it aligns with the lowest minimum wage in the county, effectively halting increases until 2029.
  
• Option 3, which county staff say “attempts to address concerns expressed by the Niwot business community and the county farming community,” would pause the 2026 increase, then begin raising wages based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) beginning in 2027, mirroring the state’s approach.

The remaining two options aim to align the county wage with the City of Boulder:

• Option 4 would match the county’s schedule to the city’s.
• Option 5 would match the city’s wage in 2026, then apply CPI-based increases thereafter. That would allow the city’s minimum wage to eventually outpace the county’s.

While Boulder County has a total workforce of over 194,000, only about 22,000 work in unincorporated areas and are directly affected by the county’s minimum wage.