NATCHEZ — On Friday, minimum wage workers across the Miss-Lou, and much of the United States, got a raise.

That’s when the federal minimum wage was adjusted from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour.

For full-time minimum wage workers, that translates to $28 more per week and more than $1,400 more per year.

And for Terecia Council, 19, that’s great news.

Council works at Kmart and said she had been looking forward to getting her raise since she first learned it would be coming.

“Everybody wants more money,” Council said while stocking batteries. “I think it’s going to help a lot of people.”

Council, a Co-Lin student, works full time in the summer and part time during the school year, and has plans to save the extra money she’ll be making.

And while Council is all smiles when talking about her new raise, not everyone at the store is as excited, she said.

Council said some of her co-workers are concerned their hours will be cut so the store can save the extra money they have to pay employees.

And for some Natchez employers, cuts to compensate for the new raises are necessary.

Natchez Markets Retail Operations Manager Barry Loy said of the 400 employees that work for Natchez Markets approximately 40 percent earn minimum wage.

And the store will have to make some adjustments for the new expense generated by the raise, he said.

“It translates to a substantial increase (in payroll), and we have to address that,” Loy said. “We’ve been planning for this so it won’t have such an impact on our profitability.”

To minimize the impact on the store’s profitability, some employees will see a decrease in the amount of hours they’re allowed to work and the store’s workers will also have to increase their productivity, Loy said.

Additionally, Loy said if those measures are unsuccessful, prices at the stores will increase.

“They won’t go up overnight, but we may have to do it,” he said.

And when the cost to pay minimum wage workers increased, it drove up other employment costs.

In fairness, the store began adjusting the wages of its other employees to compensate for the .70-cent jump in pay minimum wage earners saw Friday.

“It’s cost us a lot,” he said.

Twenty-nine states including Mississippi and Louisiana do not have a state minimum wage and must follow federal guidelines in rasing pay.

The remaining 21 states, and Washington, D.C., that have state dictated minimum wages rates and must pay the federal rate if it’s higher than the state’s rate.