Fifty-nine cents won’t buy you much these days, but that is how much Connecticut’s minimum wage is going up next year.

The new rate will be $16.94 per hour starting on Jan. 1, making Connecticut the most generous state in the nation, Gov. Ned Lamont announced on Wednesday.

The increase is part of a 2019 law that ties the minimum wage to inflation.

At Norwalk’s Silver Star Diner, Alexandros Savvidis has been cooking up tasty – and budget-friendly – dishes for decades. But running a restaurant is getting a lot more expensive.

“Ah, everything. There isn’t one thing you don't pay more,” he said. “Everything you get your hands on and you need.”

And soon, it will cost a little bit more to pay his kitchen staff. But Savvidis thinks it’s worth it.

“The people – how are they going to live?” he said. “They have to pay their bills. They have to make a living.”

Connecticut already has the country's fourth highest state minimum wage – more than double the federal rate of $7.25 an hour. However, some cities and the District of Columbia pay workers more.

Getting to this point was a long and contentious battle.

After a 14-hour debate in 2019, state lawmakers gradually raised the minimum wage from $10.10 to $15 – then tied it to the federal employment cost index.

“Nobody who works full-time should have to live in poverty,” Lamont said on Wednesday. “This is a fair, modest increase, and the money earned will go right back into our own economy, supporting local businesses in our communities.”

At the time, critics offered dire warning that businesses low-wage jobs would disappear.

“There’s not one of us who hasn’t been into a newly renovated McDonald’s, and walk in and don’t have to order from anybody, and have to hit a bunch of buttons to see what they're ordering,” said then-House Republican leader Themis Klarides.

Did that that actually happen?

It’s hard to quantify because the state does not track the number of minimum wage jobs. But overall positions have increased since the law was passed, according to the Connecticut Department of Labor.

"Since December of 2019, Connecticut has added jobs every single year, while the minimum wage rose,” said state labor commissioner Danté Bartolomeo. “Protecting workers is part of maintaining a solid economy – one that attracts new workers and focuses on making Connecticut more affordable for young people.”

DOL noted that two low-paying sectors, Accommodation & Food Services and Retail, are down from 2019 but still employ up to 150,000 people each. Both sectors were heavily impacted by the Covid pandemic, as more travel and business meetings occur virtually now.

The new minimum wage does not impact servers or bartenders, who earn a lower “tipped” wage.

Numerous efforts to scrap the system have failed, largely due to opposition from restaurants and servers themselves.