Nome, Alaska Workers

The fight

Juniors and seniors at ANSEP Acceleration Academy and Nome-Beltz High School formed the Nome Living Wage For All Alliance and submitted a ballot petition to the City of Nome on May 21, 2026. It would raise Nome’s local minimum wage from the state floor of $14 to $25 an hour.

Under the draft ordinance, large corporations reach $25 by 2029 and small businesses by 2032. The alliance needed 108 valid signatures — a quarter of the total ballots cast in Nome’s last local election — and the measure has qualified for the ballot. One Fair Wage is backing the students.

Alaska already ended the subminimum wage

Forty-three states let restaurants pay tipped workers a subminimum cash wage. Alaska is not one of them. Alaska is one of seven states — with California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington — where tipped workers are paid the full state minimum wage plus tips, with no lower tipped rate allowed.

So a server in Nome already starts at the full state minimum. That is the part most of the country is still fighting for. The problem in Nome is what that minimum is. $14 an hour is the whole wage, in a town where nearly everything arrives by barge or plane.

What $14 buys in Nome

Nome sits on the Bering Sea coast with no road to the rest of Alaska. Food and supplies come in by barge during the open-water season and by air the rest of the year, and prices follow. Cost of living in Nome runs about 20% above the U.S. average (Salary.com, 2026).

Across the Nome Census Area — the Bering Strait region Nome anchors, which is wider than the city the ballot measure would cover — 51.9% of households face severe housing problems: severe overcrowding, a lack of complete kitchen or plumbing facilities, or housing costs above 50% of income. The regional poverty rate is 21.5%, against 12.5% nationally. Sources: County Health Rankings & Roadmaps (HUD CHAS data) for severe housing problems; American Community Survey 5-year estimates for poverty.

MIT puts the minimum living wage for a single adult in the Nome Census Area at $23.96/hour. For one adult with one child it is $41.08. A $25 city floor covers a single adult with nothing left over. It does not come close to covering a parent.

Nome is already a $25 town — if you work at the hospital

The regional hospital in Nome already pays a $25 floor. The ballot measure extends that standard to everyone else who works in town.

What workers are saying

“My coworkers are living out of conex containers, and they don’t have vehicles, and they have to walk to and from work. I think they deserve to be able to live and have vehicles and have a proper house — and I think that goes for anyone.” — Renee Brown, junior at ANSEP Acceleration Academy and a special education paraprofessional at Nome Elementary School, member of the Nome Living Wage For All Alliance

On the air: KNOM Radio Mission

Nome’s public radio station covered the alliance the week the students dropped the petition off at City Hall.

“They’re just such an impressive group of young women, and we’re so proud to support them.” — Saru Jayaraman, President, One Fair Wage, via KNOM Radio Mission, May 29, 2026

Read the KNOM story →

The political moment

Alaska voters raised the state minimum themselves. Ballot Measure 1 passed 58–42 in November 2024, stepping the floor to $13 in July 2025, $14 in July 2026, and $15 in July 2027, indexed to inflation after that. Statewide support for raising wages is not in question.

What the Nome measure asks is whether a floor written for the whole state works in a road-inaccessible Bering Strait hub where the cost of living runs roughly a fifth above the national average. The students’ answer is that it does not, and they have the MIT number and their own paychecks to say so.

If the measure passes

An estimated 15–17% of Nome workers would get a raise (One Fair Wage analysis, 2026; MIT Living Wage Calculator for the Nome Census Area, 2026). Large corporations would reach $25 by 2029 and small businesses by 2032, so employers phase in over six years rather than absorbing the change at once.

Where to read more