The federally mandated minimum wage in the United States is 7.25 U.S. dollars per hour, although the minimum wage varies from state to state. As of January 1, 2025, the District of Columbia had the highest minimum wage in the U.S., at 17.5 U.S. dollars per hour. This was followed by Washington, which had 16.66 U.S. dollars per hour as the state minimum wage. Minimum wage workers Minimum wage jobs are traditionally seen as “starter jobs” in the U.S., or first jobs for teenagers and young adults, and the number of people working minimum wage jobs has decreased from almost four million in 1979 to about 247,000 in 2020. However, the number of workers earning less than minimum wage in 2020 was significantly higher, at about 865,000. Minimum wage jobs Minimum wage jobs are primarily found in food preparation and serving occupations, as well as sales jobs (primarily in retail). Because the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation, nor has it been increased since 2009, it is becoming harder and harder live off of a minimum wage wage job, and for those workers to afford essential things like rent.

Graph and download economic data for Federal Minimum Hourly Wage for Nonfarm Workers for the United States (FEDMINNFRWG) from Oct 1938 to Jun 2025 about per hour, minimum wage, nonfarm, workers, hours, federal, wages, and USA.

In 2023, around *** percent of hourly wage workers in Rhode Island earned wages at or below the federal minimum wage. This was the highest share of any U.S. state, followed by the District of Columbia with *** percent of hourly wage workers making minimum wage or less.

Graph and download economic data for Wage and Salary Workers Paid at Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: 1 to 3 Years of High School (HS13C10) from 2002 to 2024 about 1 to 3 years, paid, secondary schooling, secondary, minimum wage, salaries, workers, education, federal, wages, and USA.

Costa Rica is the country with the highest minimum monthly wage in Latin America. According to the minimum salary established by law as of January 2025, workers in the Central American country enjoy a basic monthly wage of over 726 U.S. dollars, an increase of 2.37 percent compared to the previous year. They also earn over 200 U.S. dollars more than the second place, Uruguay. On the other side of the spectrum is Venezuela, where employees are only guaranteed by law a minimum salary of 130 bolívares or little more than 2.50 dollars per month. Can Latin Americans survive on a minimum wage? Even if most countries in Latin America have instated laws to guarantee citizens a basic income, these minimum standards are often not enough to meet household needs. For instance, it was estimated that almost 25 million people in Mexico lacked basic housing services. Salary levels also vary greatly among Latin American economies. In 2020, the average net monthly salary in Mexico was barely higher than Chile's minimum wage in 2021. What can a minimum wage afford in Latin America? Latin American real wages have generally risen in the past decade. However, consumers in this region still struggle to afford non-basic goods, such as tech products. Recent estimates reveal that, in order to buy an iPhone, Brazilian residents would have to work at least two months to be able to pay for it. A gaming console, on the other hand, could easily cost a Latin American worker several minimum wages.

This dataset provides values for MINIMUM WAGES IN ASIA reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

Graph and download economic data for Wage and Salary Workers Paid at Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: High School Graduates, no College (HDNCC3) from 2002 to 2024 about no college, paid, secondary schooling, secondary, minimum wage, salaries, workers, 16 years +, education, federal, wages, and USA.

Graph and download economic data for Wage and Salary Workers Paid Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: High School Graduates or more (HSGDC8) from 2002 to 2024 about paid, secondary schooling, secondary, minimum wage, salaries, workers, 16 years +, education, federal, wages, and USA.

In the fiscal year 2024, Tokyo Prefecture recorded the highest minimum wage across Japan, with ***** Japanese yen per hour. Akita was the prefecture with the lowest hourly minimum wage.

The country with the highest minimum wage rate in Europe during the first half of 2025 was Luxembourg, with a minimum wage of 2638 euros. Ireland, the Netherlands, and Germany were the countries with the next highest minimum wages, all above 2000 euros a month, while Albania, Bulgaria, and Montenegro had the lowest minimum wages in the same period.

In 2022, France had the highest real minimum wage at **** U.S. dollars an hour out of all the OECD countries, once adjusted for purchasing power parity. Australia and Luxembourg followed behind at **** dollars per hour. On the other hand, the minimum wage in Malta was only *** dollars per hour.

United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: Master's Degree was 0.10000 % of Total Paid Hourly Rate in January of 2023, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: Master's Degree reached a record high of 0.50000 in January of 2010 and a record low of 0.00000 in January of 2017. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: Master's Degree - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at or Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: 4 Years of High School, no Diploma was 1.20000 % of Total Paid Hourly Rate in January of 2023, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at or Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: 4 Years of High School, no Diploma reached a record high of 9.80000 in January of 2010 and a record low of 1.20000 in January of 2022. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at or Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: 4 Years of High School, no Diploma - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on August of 2025.

As of January 2025, the National Capital Region (NCR) or Metro Manila registered the highest real minimum wage at ****** Philippine pesos per day. This was followed by Region IV-A or CALABARZON with a minimum wage of ****** Philippine pesos per day.

United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: Less than 1 Year of High School was 1.00000 Thous. of Persons in January of 2023, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: Less than 1 Year of High School reached a record high of 105.00000 in January of 2010 and a record low of 1.00000 in January of 2022. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: Less than 1 Year of High School - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

Analysis of ‘US Minimum Wage by State from 1968 to 2020’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/lislejoem/us-minimum-wage-by-state-from-1968-to-2017 on 12 November 2021.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

US Minimum Wage by State from 1968 to 2020

The Basics

• What is this? In the United States, states and the federal government set minimum hourly pay ("minimum wage") that workers can receive to ensure that citizens experience a minimum quality of life. This dataset provides the minimum wage data set by each state and the federal government from 1968 to 2020.

• Why did you put this together? While looking online for a clean dataset for minimum wage data by state, I was having trouble finding one. I decided to create one myself and provide it to the community.

• Who do we thank for this data? The United States Department of Labor compiles a table of this data on their website. I took the time to clean it up and provide it here for you. :) The GitHub repository (with R Code for the cleaning process) can be found here!

Content

This is a cleaned dataset of US state and federal minimum wages from 1968 to 2020 (including 2020 equivalency values). The data was scraped from the United States Department of Labor's table of minimum wage by state.

Description of Data

The values in the dataset are as follows: - Year: The year of the data. All minimum wage values are as of January 1 except 1968 and 1969, which are as of February 1. - State: The state or territory of the data. - State.Minimum.Wage: The actual State's minimum wage on January 1 of Year. - State.Minimum.Wage.2020.Dollars: The State.Minimum.Wage in 2020 dollars. - Federal.Minimum.Wage: The federal minimum wage on January 1 of Year. - Federal.Minimum.Wage.2020.Dollars: The Federal.Minimum.Wage in 2020 dollars. - Effective.Minimum.Wage: The minimum wage that is enforced in State on January 1 of Year. Because the federal minimum wage takes effect if the State's minimum wage is lower than the federal minimum wage, this is the higher of the two. - Effective.Minimum.Wage.2020.Dollars: The Effective.Minimum.Wage in 2020 dollars. - CPI.Average: The average value of the Consumer Price Index in Year. When I pulled the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I selected the dataset with "all items in U.S. city average, all urban consumers, not seasonally adjusted". - Department.Of.Labor.Uncleaned.Data: The unclean, scraped value from the Department of Labor's website. - Department.Of.Labor.Cleaned.Low.Value: The State's lowest enforced minimum wage on January 1 of Year. If there is only one minimum wage, this and the value for Department.Of.Labor.Cleaned.High.Value are identical. (Some states enforce different minimum wage laws depending on the size of the business. In states where this is the case, generally, smaller businesses have slightly lower minimum wage requirements.) - Department.Of.Labor.Cleaned.Low.Value.2020.Dollars: The Department.Of.Labor.Cleaned.Low.Value in 2020 dollars. - Department.Of.Labor.Cleaned.High.Value: The State's higher enforced minimum wage on January 1 of Year. If there is only one minimum wage, this and the value for Department.Of.Labor.Cleaned.Low.Value are identical. - Department.Of.Labor.Cleaned.High.Value.2020.Dollars: The Department.Of.Labor.Cleaned.High.Value in 2020 dollars. - Footnote: The footnote provided on the Department of Labor's website. See more below.

Data Footnotes

As laws differ significantly from territory to territory, especially relating to whom is protected by minimum wage laws, the following footnotes are located throughout the data in Footnote to add more context to the minimum wage. The original footnotes can be found here.

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

Worldwide, minimum net monthly wages vary from almost ***** U.S. dollars in Luxembourg to ** dollars in Nigeria as of January 2024. Minimum wages must be seen in relation with price levels in a country. One popular way to measure purchasing power is the Big Mac Index.

United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: High School Graduates, no College was 0.80000 % of Total Paid Hourly Rate in January of 2023, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: High School Graduates, no College reached a record high of 3.00000 in January of 2009 and a record low of 0.80000 in January of 2023. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: High School Graduates, no College - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: Less than a High School Diploma was 0.30000 % of Total Paid Hourly Rate in January of 2023, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: Less than a High School Diploma reached a record high of 6.40000 in January of 2010 and a record low of 0.30000 in January of 2023. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: Less than a High School Diploma - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

Graph and download economic data for Wage and Salary Workers Paid at or Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: 4 Years of High School, no Diploma (HS4NC9) from 2002 to 2024 about 4-years, paid, secondary schooling, secondary, minimum wage, salaries, workers, education, federal, wages, and USA.