Gov. Phil Murphy on Monday signed landmark legislation raising the minimum wage in New Jersey to $15 an hour by 2024, capping Democrats' years-long effort to improve wages for the state’s lowest-paid workers.

The law will gradually lift the minimum wage to $15 over five years, with the first pay hike from $8.85 to $10 scheduled to take effect in just five months, on July 1.

New Jersey is the fourth U.S. state to place its minimum wage on a path to $15.

Murphy, joined by state Senate President Stephen Sweeney and state Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, signed the bill at a meeting hall for Make the Road NJ in Elizabeth, an organization that deployed teen activists to fight for inclusion in the standard minimum wage.

“Today we make our economy both fairer and stronger,” Murphy said to a boisterous crowd, noting this will give thousands of Garden State families “the opportunity to join the middle class.”

Union workers carrying brightly colored signs filled the hall, many looking on from the balcony.

Murphy, Sweeney, Coughlin, and Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver — all Democrats — stepped on stage to massive applause and cheers. Murphy blew the crowd kisses.

Murphy and top lawmakers enter the hall to massive applause. Murphy blows the crowd kisses. pic.twitter.com/6k0EAxYiPE — Brent Johnson (@johnsb01) February 4, 2019

Democrats previously sought to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2016, but the effort never made it past former Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican.

Murphy — who began lobbying for this policy a few years before his election — had promised to accomplish the wage increase during his first year in office. He missed that deadline, but only by a few weeks.

Despite their broad agreement on raising the minimum wage, Sweeney, D-Gloucester, wanted special accommodations for certain industries and employers while Murphy wanted none, dragging out negotiations.

Once Murphy, Sweeney, and Coughlin, D-Middlesex, reached an agreement, the bill quickly whisked through the state Legislature last month, with votes in the Senate and Assembly sealing the deal on Thursday.

Murphy said Monday “this is a huge step forward” for more than a million workers “to able to more capably provide for themselves and their families.”

Plus, he said, the state’s businesses will have more customers and young residents will be able to amass more money to pay for college.

The legislation represents a compromise in which the standard minimum wage rises to $15 an hour in 2024 for most workers — but not all.

The minimum wage for most workers will increase to $10 an hour on July 1, to $11 on Jan. 1, 2020, $12 an hour on Jan. 1, 2021, $13 in 2022, $14 in 2023 and $15 in 2024.

Seasonal workers and workers at business that employ five or fewer employees won’t reach $15 an hour until 2026. Farm workers will hit $12.50 in 2024, after which it would be left up to state officials in the executive branch whether to keep going to $15 an hour by 2027.

New Jersey Policy Perspective, a liberal Trenton think tank, estimated more than 1 million workers will benefit from the wage hike. But about 10 percent of those employees will be put on the slower path.

Someone working 40 hours a week at the current minimum wage, $8.85 an hour, earns $354 a week, or $18,408 a year. At $10 an hour, that same worker will earn $400 a week and $20,800 a year. And at $15 an hour, they will earn $600 a week and $31,200 a year.

The Garden State joins Washington D.C., which is en route to a $15 minimum wage in 2020, California, which will get there in 2022, and Massachusetts, which reaches $15 in 2023. Employers with more than 10 employees are already required to pay at least $15 in New York City and smaller businesses will join them at the end of this year. Counties downstate in New York have a reprieve until 2021.

Notably, teens under 18 once expected to be carved out from the standard $15 an hour, are on the path to $15 in 2024 in New Jersey.

Labor advocates who have cheered on the legislation say, however, that the fight continues for agricultural workers who risk becoming a permanent underclass under a bill they said perpetuates a “legacy of racism.”

“The exclusion of farmworkers from important labor protections is hardly new. Historically, farmworkers have been left out and left behind when the most important labor laws in our country were passed. These exclusions from labor protections were purposefully racist and discriminatory in order to deny equal rights to African-American and Latino workers,” the south Jersey CATA, The Farmworker Support Committee, said in a letter to lawmakers.

Business owners, meanwhile, argued the bill doesn’t carve out enough workers and ridiculed its definition of a small business as employing fewer than six people. They told lawmakers they will be buried by payroll and forced to raise prices, slash benefits, cut staff or close up shop.

Lobbyists pressed Democrats to attach an emergency lever to the bill that would allow the state to pause the scheduled wage hikes in the event of an economic downturn or natural disaster and to exempt larger groups of workers. They criticized lawmakers for ignoring their pleas.

Republican Assemblyman Hal Wirths, R-Sussex, a former state labor commissioner under Christie, said the law ignores the “inevitability of a recession” and imposes labor costs small businesses can’t possibly afford.

State Sen. Christopher “Kip” Bateman, R-Somerset, warned of dire consequences, saying this move to $15 will cost jobs through shuttered businesses and an acceleration toward automation.

“To someone who lives paycheck to paycheck, what’s worse: having a job that doesn’t pay enough? Or no job at all? The answer is pretty clear," Bateman said in a statement.

Sweeney, the state Senate president, and Coughlin, the Assembly speaker, said Monday they took pains strike a balance between the needs of New Jersey’s working poor and the businesses that employ them.

“The fundamental reality is $8.85 is not enough for this state,” Coughlin said. “Today, we have a bill that is fair to everybody.”

“The rich are getting richer. And the workers are getting less," Sweeney said. "The reality is: We’re lifting people up.”

New Jersey’s wealth gap is 13th widest in the U.S. It has one of the highest median incomes in the country but one in 10 residents also live under the federal poverty line, which measures only extreme poverty.

The law also creates a training wage which would allow employers to pay new employees a sub-minimum wage — but no less than 90 percent of the minimum wage — for their first 120 hours of work.

It also raises the tipped wage from $2.13 an hour to $5.13 an hour. That wage, combined with a worker’s tips, must equal the standard hourly minimum.

And the law allows up to $10 million in tax credits annually for businesses that hire workers with disabilities.

Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @samanthamarcus.

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01