White House pool photo via Getty Images

During tonight’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama will announce that he plans to sign an executive order to raise the minimum wage for new federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour. He will also once again call for Congress to raise the minimum wage for all workers.

Obama’s new executive order will increase the minimum wage for those working on new federal contracts—including janitors and construction workers—to $10.10 an hour. The increase will go into effect for new contracts after the effective date of the order (which hasn’t been announced yet) so as to give contractors an appropriate amount of time to prepare.

According to a White House release, Obama is using the executive order to “lead by example” in trying to work with Congress to help pass the Harkin-Miller bill, which would raise the federal minimum wage for everyone to $10.10 an hour and index it to inflation after that. The bill would also raise the minimum wage for tipped workers for the first time in more than 20 years.

Last year, the president called for a minimum wage increase in his annual State of the Union address and since then, five states (California, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island) plus the District of Columbia have passed minimum wage increase laws.

In the past year, dozens of protests by federally-contracted service industry workers were held in hundreds of cities across the country. Organized by groups like Good Jobs Nation— a coalition of of low-wage workers employed by government contractors—workers demanded that the President raise wages for federally-contracted workers.