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 from Oct 1938 to Jun 2025 about per hour, minimum wage, nonfarm, workers, hours, federal, wages, and USA.

Minimum Wages in the United States remained unchanged at 7.25 USD/Hour in 2025 from 7.25 USD/Hour in 2024. This dataset provides - United States Minimum Wages- actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news.

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.

A 2021 analysis of state minimum wages and union density found that states with a high union density had a higher than average minimum wage at the state level. States with low union density had the lowest average minimum wages. Union density by state for 2022 can be found here.

Graph and download economic data for State Minimum Wage Rate for California (STTMINWGCA) from 1968 to 2025 about minimum wage, wages, CA, rate, and USA.

This statistic shows the real hourly minimum wage in the United States from 2001 to 2022 (in PPP U.S. dollars). In the United States in 2022, the real minimum wage was *** U.S. dollars per hour.

Graph and download economic data for Federal Minimum Wage Rate under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (STTMINWGFG) from 1968 to 2025 about minimum wage, federal, wages, labor, rate, and USA.

United States - Federal Minimum Wage Rate under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act was 7.25000 $ per Hour in January of 2025, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Federal Minimum Wage Rate under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act reached a record high of 7.25000 in January of 2010 and a record low of 1.60000 in January of 1969. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Federal Minimum Wage Rate under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act - 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 ---

Graph and download economic data for Employed: Percent of hourly paid workers: Paid total at or below prevailing federal minimum wage: Private wage and salary workers: Food services and drinking places industries: 16 years and over (LEU0206959300A) from 2000 to 2024 about paid, beverages, minimum wage, salaries, workers, hours, 16 years +, federal, food, wages, percent, services, private, employment, industry, and USA.

United States - Employed: Paid total at or below prevailing federal minimum wage: Private wage and salary workers: Transportation and utilities industries: 16 years and over was 19.00000 Thous. of Persons in January of 2024, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Employed: Paid total at or below prevailing federal minimum wage: Private wage and salary workers: Transportation and utilities industries: 16 years and over reached a record high of 51.00000 in January of 2010 and a record low of 14.00000 in January of 2022. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Employed: Paid total at or below prevailing federal minimum wage: Private wage and salary workers: Transportation and utilities industries: 16 years and over - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

Graph and download economic data for Employed: Paid below prevailing federal minimum wage: Federal wage and salary workers: 16 years and over (LEU0204926700A) from 2000 to 2024 about paid, minimum wage, salaries, workers, 16 years +, federal, wages, employment, and USA.

United States - Employed: Paid below prevailing federal minimum wage: Wage and salary workers: Community and social services occupations: 16 years and over was 4.00000 Thous. of Persons in January of 2024, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Employed: Paid below prevailing federal minimum wage: Wage and salary workers: Community and social services occupations: 16 years and over reached a record high of 10.00000 in January of 2010 and a record low of 0.00000 in January of 2011. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Employed: Paid below prevailing federal minimum wage: Wage and salary workers: Community and social services occupations: 16 years and over - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

This web map, used in The Ever-Changing Minimum Wage Story Map Journal, comprises a selection of feature layers that provide an overview of minimum wages and policies for the 50 U.S. states, District of Columbia, and 36 other localities (counties, cities). Essential data points include minimum wages effective in 2018, historical state minimum wages from 1968 through 2017 (adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars), comparative data with state living wages (2016 update), and benchmarks for future minimum wages where available. This data was digitized and compiled from the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Conference on State Legislatures, the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center, and MIT's Living Wage Calculator.The styling for this web map uses the composite geographies layout with a dark gray background. Composite geographies are a customized solution created by Esri's David Asbury in order to position Alaska and Hawaii adjacent to the contiguous United States within a Web Mercator projection web map. The dark theme is achieved with a dark gray feature layer that serves as a background to mask out the default background. For more information about using composite geographies, read this blog.

Comprehensive dataset of minimum wage rates, overtime rules, and labor law exceptions for all U.S. states and territories for 2025.

When adjusted for inflation, the 2024 federal minimum wage in the United States is over 40 percent lower than the minimum wage in 1970. Although the real dollar minimum wage in 1970 was only 1.60 U.S. dollars, when expressed in nominal 2024 dollars this increases to 13.05 U.S. dollars. This is a significant difference from the federal minimum wage in 2024 of 7.25 U.S. dollars.

This statistic shows the percent of workers paid hourly rates at or below prevailing federal minimum wage in the United States from 1980 to 2023, by gender. In 2023, only 1.5 percent of the female wage and salary workers were paid hourly rates at or below the federal minimum wage, compared to 21.6 percent in 1980.

In 1979, about 3.99 million workers were paid hourly rates at the official minimum wage. In 2023, about 81,000 workers were paid hourly rates at the prevailing minimum wage. The prevailing Federal minimum wage was 7.25 U.S. dollars per hour in 2023.

This statistic shows the number of workers paid hourly rates at or below prevailing federal minimum wage in the United States in 2023, by race or ethnicity. In 2023, about 666,000 white people were paid at or below the federal minimum wage.