Connecticut lawmakers Wednesday evening approved legislation that raises the state's minimum wage level to $10.10 an hour by 2017, making it the state with the highest minimum wage in the nation.

Governor Daniel P. Malloy, a Democrat who has been highly supportive of President Barack Obama's push to raise minimum wages, is expected to sign the bill into law Thursday evening.

The bill passed in the House with an 87-54 vote of approval and a 21-14 vote in the Senate.

In the first of what may be many executive orders signed by the president, according to his State of the Union address, Obama raised the minimum wage for federally contracted employees from $7.25 to $10.10 on Feb. 12.

Maryland, Massachusetts and Hawaii, among other states, currently have legislation on the books to raise its minimum wages for its workers, according to the National Employment Law Project.

Tsedeye Gebreselassie, National Employment Law Project attorney, said more than 200,000 low-wage workers in Connecticut will get a boost in pay, helping them spend money on their families, food, mortgages and even their local economies.

"So (the increase) is something that will help, not just Connecticut workers and families, but local economy in Connecticut that relies on people actually having money to spend so businesses can stay afloat," she said. "It's great news for Connecticut and I think it's a turning point."

While many economists in the nation argue job losses and increase in unemployment are inevitable with minimum wage increases, Gebreselassie said that would not be the case because a bump in pay would go back into consumer spending and the economy.

"It is exactly because you're putting more money into local economies," she said. "Businesses benefit from reduced employee turnover that comes when you pay workers more."

She also said that only 11 states -- Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington -- index their minimum wages to inflation, which matches the minimum pay to the rise in cost of living. She argued that if the rest of the nation and the federal government had done the same, the minimum wage would be higher than what advocates are asking for now.

"We're talking about pretty modest increases here," Gebreselassie said. "If the minimum wage kept up with inflation over the last 45 years, it would be almost $11 an hour today."

Gebreselassie said most corporations in the U.S. and their chief executives can afford the modest increase in pay to its employees.

"If you look at some of the largest employers of low-wage workers, corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonald's ... these are corporations that are highly profitable," Gebreselassie said. "And their CEOs are enjoying record compensation packages, so they can absolutely afford to pay much better than what they're doing."

According to a Yahoo! Finance report, if CEOs of some of the nation's leading retailers and fast-food chains including McDonald's, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target, worked on an hourly basis, they would earn about $7,000. Their employees, however, currently average $8.73 an hour.

With the minimum wage increase to $10.10, full-time employees would earn roughly $20,000 a year. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average annual income per capita is roughly $28,000.

"It's still not enough to really survive let alone if you have a family," Gebreselassie said, adding, "but I think it's a great, great first step and it will have a real impact on the workers who are going to see an increase."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2012 roughly 75 million workers above the age of 16 were paid at hourly rates, which made up 59 percent of all wage and salary employees in the nation.

"More and more Americans are relying on low-wage jobs to make ends meet," said Gebreselassie. "So if you have ... millions of workers making less than $10 an hour, that's bad for workers and their families. That's bad for economic recovery. We need a wage to keep up with the cost of living that's enough for these workers and their families to survive."

However, according to the same data, 4.7 percent of all hourly paid workers were comprised of employees that either earned wages at exactly the federal minimum (1.6 million people) or below the minimum (2 million people).

The leisure and hospitality industry represented about half of all workers who were paid at or below the federal minimum in 2012, according to the bureau's statistics.

Out of all the women working for hourly pay in 2012, 6 percent of them were earning wages below the federal minimum while only 3 percent of men earned below the minimum wage.

Furthermore, 5 percent of Hispanic workers earning hourly rates were paid at or below the federal minimum; while 4.7 percent of whites, 5.3 percent of African Americans and 3.4 percent of Asians were paid hourly rates at or below the federal minimum.

Brent Wilkes, League of United Latin American Citizens nation executive director, said minimum wage has a considerable impact on minority communities especially Hispanics, because Latinos are the hardest working population while earning the lowest wages in the U.S.

"Latinos work the longest hours and get paid the least," Wilkes said, adding, "and because of that factor ... there's a lot of Latinos that would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage because so many aren't earning minimum wage currently."

Wilkes, who took the time to speak briefly with the Latin Post about the nationwide minimum wage debate while attending the annual LULAC National Women's Conference in Milwaukee, Wis., said most Latinos working in minimum-wage industries are employed in the service industry such as restaurant and homecare jobs.

"When you really think about the occupations that we depend upon most in the United States, those that pick our food and put the food on the table for us and take care of our kids ... and in fact build our homes, that's where you find the Latino population," Wilkes lamented. "Instead of rewarding them for the importance their work is to our lives, we end up putting them in these low-wage jobs and that is something that needs to change. It's unfair that the lowest paid jobs in America are often the most important to our daily lives."

According to the recent Monthly Latino Employment Report by the National Council of La Raza, Latinos made up 23.8 percent of food industry workers, while 41.2 percent were construction laborers and 30.9 percent were janitors and cleaners.

The occupations with the lowest amount of Latinos were registered nurses at 6.2 percent and post-secondary teachers at also 6.2 percent.

"The current minimum wage is not enough to keep a single parent with one child out of poverty," the report said. "A recent study by University of Massachusetts Amherst economist Arindrajit Dube shows that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would bring nearly five million people out of poverty and reduce the nation's poor by 6.8 million."

Wilkes argued similarly that increasing the minimum wage would have a circular effect on the economy. He said that, as more money is placed into the pockets of millions of low-wage-earning workers, the money would be spent at local retailers for goods and services, essentially boosting the economy and creating more jobs.

"I think that we actually benefit more by having additional dollars in the pockets of workers because they go out and spend that money, especially if you're at the minimum wage level," he said. "The fact is that if workers get paid better, they go out and spend that money, it creates more job opportunities for other folks."