"St. Louis' Minimum Wage Has Dropped After Missouri's Governor Said Increasing It to $10 Would Take 'Money Out of People's Pockets'," 29 August 2017

St. Louis' minimum wage has reverted to $7.70 because of opposition from Gov. Eric Greitens to a brief increase to $10. Greitens announced the reversal in July, arguing that the increase would kill jobs. "Despite what you hear from liberals, it will take money out of people's pockets," he said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. St. Louis passed an ordinance in 2015 mandating that the city's minimum wage increase to $10 by 2017. A court battle between Missouri's state legislature and the city of St. Louis ensued, with the city's minimum wage eventually rising to $10 in May of this year. That wage was slated to increase further to $11 an hour next January. Greitens, however, supported a recent bill in the Missouri legislature that prohibited cities from creating a different minimum wage from the statewide one. The new law went into effect Monday, putting about 35,000 people who benefited from the increase to $10 at risk of a pay cut.

Outside Missouri, many states are looking to increase their minimum wage. Last March, Gov. Jerry Brown of California agreed to raise the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022. Many US cities have plans to hit the same rate even earlier...