The state’s minimum wage will inflate to $9.04 per hour on Jan. 1, making Washington the first state where the greenest of workers will earn more than $9.

The minimum has climbed almost annually every year since 1998, when Washington voters approved a measure that pegged increases to inflation, but not just any inflation. The hikes track a federal index tied to urban wage earnings nationally, the benchmark that has risen fastest over the years.

And the wages can never fall. Even though the index fell two years ago, a court ruled the law did not allow wage reductions – a deal many other workers further up the pay scale would take in a heartbeat right now.

So, those minimum wage employees who work full time – and many, many do not – will get an additional $770 in cash compensation in 2012 compared with 2011.

Is the additional 37 cents per hour enough cause for struggling small business owners to lay off anyone? Unlikely, at least according to past studies that looked at minimum wage hikes and shifting employment levels, and found no correlation.

Will any business move? Again, unlikely. The types of businesses that pay the minimum – food service, retail, agriculture and some health care – are not very portable. Restaurants and stores have to stay close to their customers, hospitals close to their patients. Farm and farm-processing jobs are more or less fixed to the land.

The escape valve for Spokane-area employers is North Idaho. But how many Spokane consumers will follow a restaurant or retailer over the border, where employers need pay only $7.25 an hour, the national minimum wage? A more likely scenario is Idaho workers competing for jobs in Spokane. Four years ago, when unemployment was below 3 percent in North Idaho, businesses had to match Washington’s minimum just to hold on to their workers. With three times as many looking for a job now, that’s no longer an imperative.

The Washington Restaurant Association notes the industry has cut 10,000 jobs in the last year. The typical Washington restaurant employs three fewer employees than comparable establishments in other states. Try to find help in some big-box stores, and there’s almost a sense of abandonment.

Although no one may lose a job when wages go up, it’s a sure bet no one gets hired.

Attempts have been made in the Legislature, and will be made again, to introduce a lower “training wage” for workers with less than four months experience. The $7.25 per hour rate would be the training minimum.

Some alternative might be worth trying, but $7.25 seems like too little to get anyone other than teenagers interested. They are the workers most likely to be exploited by unscrupulous employers, and the least likely to complain. Enforcement could become a nightmare.

Better, perhaps, to adopt a wage inflation index more indicative of a broader labor market, and at least hold Washington’s increases to those made by the nine other states – soon to be joined by others – that allow annual adjustments to their minimums.

There has to be a balance between worker earning power and employer staying power.