ALBANY – The hourly minimum wage for the New York City area would rise from $15 to $16 next year — and to $17 by 2026 — under a tentative budget deal, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesday.

“New Yorkers are struggling, and we have to raise wages so they can pay their bills pay their rent, pay their utility bills pay for food for their kids,” Hochul told reporters at the Capitol.

“I support raising the wage along the lines that we’re talking about,” she added in her first public appearance on the late budget in 11 days.

The emerging deal would raise the minimum wage by $1 in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County by Jan. 1, 2024, with 50-cent increases each year until 2026.

That is a bigger increase than what Hochul sought in the draft budget she unveiled Feb. 1, which only called for increases to be pegged to inflation.

A whopping 70% of registered voters said they support pairing minimum-wage increases to inflation in a Siena College poll released at the end of February.

And even a majority of Republicans backed the idea.

But business leaders say a wage hike is nonetheless the wrong move to make while businesses are still grappling with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The state legislature had a real opportunity to help small businesses specifically with the Unemployment Insurance debt that ballooned from state-mandated COVID shutdowns,” said Heather Mulligan, president and CEO of The Business Council of New York State.

“But instead they chose another tax on small businesses in the form of a minimum wage increase that will impact all small employers across the entire state,” she said of the tentative deal.

Progress on the issue is expected to smooth the way for a final spending plan as soon as the end of this week, after Hochul and legislative leaders missed an April 1 budget deadline.

But a last-ditch effort from organized labor and the progressive left – who want a $21.25 minimum wage – threatens the bargain struck by Hochul, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers).

“Under record inflation and a historic cost-of-living crisis, a $17 minimum wage does not add up to livable wage. It is simply not enough,” said the advocacy group ALIGN, which includes unions like the AFL-CIO, DC37, Teamsters and the Retail Wholesale Department Store Union, in a statement.

The issue of a pay boost is one of several that have put Hochul on the wrong side of powerful union leaders such as 1199 SEIU honcho George Gresham, who has also pushed for the more aggressive hike.

Increasing pay will cost workers, though, by pushing employers to replace human workers with robots, according to Queens Chamber of Commerce President Tom Grechen.

“The wage increases are difficult to absorb and pass along. We’re seeing a push toward automation because mom-and-pop shops can’t afford the minimum wage,” he said.

Retail establishments will likewise accelerate the adoption of self-check-out lines that will lead to fewer jobs in the end, said Mike Durant, president of the Food Industry Alliance of New York State.

“We don’t think it’s time for New York to increase labor costs. It’s not going to help with the high costs of groceries,” Durant said.