Most of Virginia’s lowest paid workers will ring in the New Year with a $1-an-hour pay hike, while grocery shoppers will see a smaller tax bite on their purchases.

Effective Jan. 1, the state’s minimum wage will rise from $11 an hour to $12 an hour, an increase of $40 a week or $2,080 a year for those affected.

The pay hike continues the increase in the minimum wage that the Democratic majority in the General Assembly spear-headed in 2020.

The new law untied Virginia for the first time from the federal minimum wage, which has been set at $7.25 an hour since 2009 and will continue at that level in 2023. Virginia is one of 30 states that have set minimum wages higher than the federal rate.

Hopes of raising that wage to $15 an hour by 2026 though will rest on whether the General Assembly can re-enact that increase either in the upcoming session or in the 2024 session. If not, effective in 2025, the minimum wage would be indexed to inflation and go up the same percent as any reported increase in the consumer price index. Aside from raising the wage floor, the 2020 legislation also expanded the coverage to more employees, including home health providers, maids and others domestic workers and waiters and other restaurant workers.

Under the law, restaurant workers and others who receive part of their pay from customer tips must receive a total wage equal to at least the minimum wage, with the owner making up any difference. Farm workers are the only major group still exempt from the minimum wage. Also, beginning Jan. 1, the state’s 1.5 percent sales tax on food for home consumption and female menstrual products will disappear, saving shoppers $1.50 per $100 spent.

Gov. Glenn A. Youngkin won General Assembly support to eliminate the state’s share of the tax, though the local 1 percent sales tax on such items will still be collected as will any add-on sales tax set at the local level.

The state’s share of the sales tax still will be collected on restaurant meals or other hot prepared meals, as well as on sales of alcohol, tobacco and seeds and plants for gardens.