The Democratic governors of New York and California on Monday signed separate and unprecedented $15-per-hour minimum wage bills, which will gradually lift the wages of nearly nine million people who work in those states.

California’s base wage will rise to $15 by 2022 from the current rate of $10 per hour. New York’s wage hike is less sweeping, with New York City workers to get a $15 per hour minimum wage at the end of 2018, and Suffolk, Westchester, and Nassau counties reaching $15 by the end of 2022, as Syracuse.com reported.

The minimum wage in upstate New York would rise to $12.50 at the end 2020, with future hikes tied to economic conditions. The state’s minimum is now $9 an hour.

An estimated six-and-a-half million people who work in California and more than two million in New York state will see their wages rise under new laws.

Both laws carve out exceptions to the wage hikes for small businesses, with California’s law allowing the scheduled hikes to be scaled back in the case of an economic downturn. New York’s law also includes a provision for 12 weeks of paid family leave.

California’s Democratic-led legislature and governor struck the wage deal last week after a statewide, union-led $15-minimum-wage ballot measure gathered enough signatures to go before voters in November. That initiative would have raised the statewide wage to $15 by 2021—a year earlier than under the new law.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed the landmark legislation in ceremonies Monday morning in New York City and Los Angeles, respectively.

“We want economic justice and we want it now,” Cuomo said as he signed the law, noting that a New York family can’t live on the state’s $9 an hour minimum wage.

Brown signed his state’s legislation, sounding a more cautious note, as the Sacramento Bee reported.

“Economically, minimum wages may not make sense,” Brown said, before adding that wage hikes encompass more than economics. “Morally and socially and politically, they (minimum wages) make every sense because it binds the community together and makes sure that parents can take care of their kids in a much more satisfactory way.”

Voters in both states favored the wage hikes. In recent polls, two-thirds of registered New York voters supported a $15 per hour minimum wage, with support strongest in New York City. In California, 68 percent of registered voters in a poll last year favored increasing the base wage $1 per hour every year for five years.

New documents leaked to the Center for Media and Democracy show that most business leaders support the minimum wage, despite rhetoric to the contrary by chambers of commerce, which typically fight against efforts to raise wages for people who work.

Demands for better pay made headlines last year when thousands of fast-food employees marched in 400 cities in support of pay hikes and unionization in the Fight for $15 campaign. Some states and cities have acted to raise local base wages above the federal minimum, which has been stuck at $7.25 per hour since 2009.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) last month signed legislation to raise the minimum wage to $14.75 in the Portland area, $13.50 in urban counties, and $12.50 in rural regions by 2022.

More than 200 bills in 2015 called for increases to state or federal minimum wage, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures.