A $15 minimum wage proposal will be on Floridians’ 2020 ballot as Amendment 2. Florida For A Fair Wage collected the required 766,260 petition signatures in October and the state Supreme Court approved the ballot language on Dec. 19. Some major corporations, like Amazon and Disney, began to offer their employees $15 an hour last year, and certain cities, like New York City and Seattle, also have adopted a $15 minimum wage. If the amendment passes, minimum wage would increase to $10 per hour in September 2021, then by $1 per hour each September until 2026. Annual wage costs will be approximately $16 million in 2022, increasing to about $540 million in 2027 and thereafter. Florida's current minimum wage is $8.46. The minimum-wage proposal is the first initiative that the Supreme Court has approved for the 2020 ballot; it would need approval from 60 percent of voters to take effect.

Locally, Project Coffee in downtown Sarasota's Burns Court neighborhood has instituted a $15 minimum wage; owner Ian Steger says the biggest problems facing every place he worked was low morale and high employee turnover. He argues that the obvious solution is to pay employees more, adding that since opening July, he hasn’t lost a single employee and he’s turning a small profit.