New Year Brings Minimum-Wage Hikes In 10 States 
 
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 On Tuesday, the minimum wage in 10 states will increase by anywhere from a dime to 35 cents. 
 
 For all of the states but one, the pay hikes are part of automatic adjustments designed to keep up with the cost of living. 
 
 In Rhode Island, it took a state law to raise the minimum wage for the first time in five years. 
 
 Rising Wages Vs. Rising Prices 
 
 Cafe Zog in Providence is a cozy, quirky place where you can grab a coffee and bagel to go, or nab a booth then head to the counter to order a hot breakfast. 
 
 There are two colleges nearby, so cafe owner Julio Fonseca tends to hire students or recent grads. 
 
 "They start at a minimum wage," he says. "After a few months, if they stay, we usually reward them according to their work ethics." 
 
 Sydonia Lary has worked at the cafe long enough to get a bump in pay. As an artist working two hourly wage jobs, she says, it's difficult to make ends meet. 
 
 "I mean, this economy, everything is so expensive nowadays, and trying to pay rent and get groceries and whatever your mode of transportation may be, only making $7.40 an hour, it just doesn't really cut it," she says. 
 
 Rhode Island is hiking its minimum wage from that $7.40 to $7.75. For workers like Lary, this is good news. Not so much for her boss. Fonseca says it will be more expensive for him to reward his hard-working employees. He has spent the past year watching food prices climb, and now that wages are rising, he's worried. 
 
 "Every time something goes up, we can't raise the prices, otherwise we're going to price ourselves out of the market," he says. "So, it's very tough." 
 
 Losing The Low Rung On The Totem Pole 
 
 Bill Vernon works with the National Federation of Independent Business, a group that tends to fight against wage hikes. He says higher wages will force businesses to refrain from hiring, and that will harm young workers looking for that entry-level job. 
 
 "An increase in the minimum wage eliminates that low rung on the ladder that people can step on to get ahead," he says. 
 
 States can set their own minimum wage. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, the federal wage is the least someone can make. In the 10 states raising theirs on Jan. 1, nearly a million workers will benefit. Washington state has bumped its wage up to $9.19 an hour. That's almost $2 more than in neighboring Idaho. 
 
 T. William Lester, a regional economist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, works with a research team that looked at minimum wages along state lines. 
 
 "It's not like all the businesses that used to be in Washington state found it now way more worthwhile to relocate to Idaho and take advantage of the lower minimum wage," he says. 
 
 In fact, the research team looked at every county that borders a state line and found that a rising minimum wage had no impact on employment. It actually cut costs by reducing turnover. 
 
 "And when you raise the minimum wage, you kind of are raising the bar," Lester says. 
 
 NFIB's Bill Vernon says legislatures in some 40 states will look at raising their minimum wage this year. And lawmakers on Capitol Hill are kicking around the idea of bumping up the $7.25 federal minimum wage by about $2. 
 
 Vernon says he could see Congress agreeing to a $1 raise, but that would take compromise, something that hasn't been around much in Washington these days. ||||| With a bump in the Washington state minimum wage to $9.19 an hour, high school student Miranda Olson will edge closer to her goal of buying the black Volkswagen Beetle she's been researching online. 
 
 Olson is only able to pick up part-time hours working at a cafe after classes and on weekends. But the extra pennies she'll earn in 2013 will add up over the coming weeks and months. 
 
 "It's not much, but it's something," said Olson, 16, who works at Wagner's European Bakery and Cafe in Olympia. "Every bit helps." 
 
 Many workers around the country won't be as lucky as residents of Washington state, which is raising its minimum wage Tuesday by 15 cents an hour even though it already has the highest state baseline in the country. 
 
 Minimum-wage workers in Idaho will make nearly $2 an hour less in 2013 than their counterparts living just one state to the west. 
 
 Automatic increases designed to compensate for inflation have steadily pushed up wages in some states, even through the recession, expanding the pay gap between areas that make annual adjustments and those that don't. Of the 10 states that will increase the minimum wage Tuesday, nine did so automatically to adjust for inflation. 
 
 Rhode Island lawmakers approved that state's wage increase in the past year. 
 
 Paul Sonn, legal co-director at the National Employment Law Project, said he hopes more states will start looking at automatic adjustments as the economy recovers. He said the model _ which Washington state adopted in 1998 _ helps avoid sudden jolts as states try to catch up with each other. 
 
 "We think there's a case that it's better for everyone, including the business community, to have predictable, regular, small increases every year," Sonn said. 
 
 The automatic adjustments aren't much. Washington's bump will mean those who work 40-hour weeks will earn an extra $6 a week _ enough for a couple lattes _ or about $300 a year. 
 
 Hundreds of thousands of workers are expected to get a pay increase with the wage adjustments that begin New Year's Day. Along with Washington and Rhode Island, the changes will occur in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon and Vermont. 
 
 Among the nine states with automatic adjustments, the average minimum wage is $8.12 an hour, up from a little under $8. States that do not have automatic changes operate with an average minimum wage of about $7.40 _ a difference of about $1,500 a year for a full-time worker. 
 
 Many states, including Idaho, follow the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, either because they've tied their minimum wage to that threshold or because the state-enacted minimum is lower than that. 
 
 San Francisco has set the highest local minimum wage and will have workers paid at least $10.55 an hour in 2013. 
 
 Groups such as the National Restaurant Association oppose further increases in federal or state minimum wages, arguing that it's an ineffective way to reduce poverty and forces business owners to cut hours, raise prices or lay off workers. 
 
 At Tom's 1st Avenue Bento, a downtown Portland lunch spot, owner Tom Hume said he boosted pay for minimum-wage workers before the end of the year in order to get ahead of the game. He also raised prices on one-third of his menu items by 25 cents. 
 
 Natasha Baker, 22, who works at Hume's restaurant in Portland, recently moved back in with her mother but hopes to move to another apartment in January. She said the extra $5 or $6 she's earning every week with the salary boost is OK but won't make a huge difference. 
 
 "I don't usually look at what I get paid," she said. "I'm more directed on what's being taken out, which is more discouraging than anything." 
 
 In Montpelier, Vt., restaurant owner Irene Facciolo said she supported the 14-cents-an-hour increase in the minimum wage for her employees. She said the move from $8.46 to $8.60 an hour wasn't much. 
 
 "We don't have a problem with it at all," Facciolo said. 
 
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 AP Writers Steven Dubois in Portland, Ore., and Dave Gram in Montpelier, Vt., contributed to this report. AP Writer Mike Baker can be reached on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/HiPpEV
– The new year brings with it minimum wage increases—from as little as 10 cents to as much as 35 cents—in 10 states, helping almost one million workers, NPR reports. Nine of the hikes were part of automatic cost-of-living adjustments, but in Rhode Island, the wage was upped for the first time in five years thanks to a new law. The increases also mean that the minimum wage gap is growing, the AP points out: Washington state, for example, bumped its minimum up to $9.19 per hour, while in neighboring Idaho, the lowest wage is almost $2 per hour less.