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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

This feature layer consists of the contiguous United States and District of Columbia, with Alaska and Hawaii. It comprises state minimum wage data for 2018, as well as historical data since 1968, and future data where available. The data was compiled from the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center, with living wage data from MIT's Living Wage Calculator. This layer uses the composite geographies layout to position Alaska and Hawaii adjacent to the contiguous United States.Attributes:

Field Name Unit Description

PeakMW Nominal dollar value Highest minimum wage value planned to be reached in future years (2019-2022)

PeakYR Year The year that the highest minimum wage value is planned to be reached (2019-2022)

DiffPeak2018 Nominal dollar value (difference) The difference between the peak minimum wage and the 2018 minimum wage (PeakMW - DiffPeak2018)

MW2018 Nominal dollar value 2018 state minimum wage

Increase2017 Nominal dollar value (difference) The difference between the 2018 minimum wage and the 2017 minimum wage (MW2018 - MW2017)

Increase2000 2017 dollar value (difference) The difference between the 2018 minimum wage and the 2000 minimum wage (MW2018-MW2000)

Effective2018 Nominal dollar value The minimum wage effective in 2018. For states with minimum wages below the federal minimum wage of $7.25, or for states that have no minimum wage requirement, the federal minimum wage applies.

LV2016 Nominal dollar value 2016 living wage for a single adult at the state level

DiffMWLV Nominal dollar value (difference) The difference between the 2018 minimum wage and the 2016 living wage

CurrentMW Category The type of minimum wage policy in place at the state level

PoliciesMW Text When a state has an indexed minimum wage, the type of policy is described here

Update2018 Category Yes = the state implemented an update to its minimum wage in 2018; No = no policy update in 2018

MW2017 Nominal dollar value 2017 minimum wage

MW2016 2017 dollar value 2016 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2015 2017 dollar value 2015 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2014 2017 dollar value 2014 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2013 2017 dollar value 2013 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2012 2017 dollar value 2012 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2011 2017 dollar value 2011 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2010 2017 dollar value 2010 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2009 2017 dollar value 2009 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2008 2017 dollar value 2008 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2007 2017 dollar value 2007 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2006 2017 dollar value 2006 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2005 2017 dollar value 2005 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2004 2017 dollar value 2004 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2003 2017 dollar value 2003 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2002 2017 dollar value 2002 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2001 2017 dollar value 2001 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW2000 2017 dollar value 2000 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1998 2017 dollar value 1998 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1997 2017 dollar value 1997 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1996 2017 dollar value 1996 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1994 2017 dollar value 1994 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1992 2017 dollar value 1992 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1991 2017 dollar value 1991 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1988 2017 dollar value 1988 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1981 2017 dollar value 1981 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1980 2017 dollar value 1980 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1979 2017 dollar value 1979 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1976 2017 dollar value 1976 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1972 2017 dollar value 1972 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1970 2017 dollar value 1970 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

MW1968 2017 dollar value 1968 minimum wage, adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars

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 ---

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

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 Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: 1 to 3 Years of High School was 72.00000 Thous. of Persons 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: 1 to 3 Years of High School reached a record high of 459.00000 in January of 2010 and a record low of 56.00000 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 Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: 1 to 3 Years of High School - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

Most countries in the world have country-level policies concerning their minimum wage-fixing machinery. These policies vary widely, and therefore it becomes important to have adequate classifications of these policies. This paper reviews databases that classify country-level policies for determining minimum wages. Several databases - we found twelve - classify countries according to their minimum wage-fixing mechanisms and the coverage of these mechanisms. The mechanisms indicate whether the minimum wages are set by Law, by Collective Bargaining or any policy in between, the coverage indicates whether the minimum wages cover the entire dependent labour force or only one or more sections within the labour force. The twelve databases vary with respect to the years covered, the countries covered and the characteristics coded. We restricted our analysis to the years 2011 to 2015. The number of countries covered in these databases range from 29 to 189, with 195 countries in total. The merged database reveals that countries are not classified similarly across databases. Between 75% and 93% of the countries apply a statutory minimum wage-fixing mechanism across years and databases. Less than one in ten countries relies solely on minimum wage setting by collective bargaining. In the EU28 plus Norway this percentage is relatively high, but in countries outside Europe it is far below 10%. Two ILO conventions refer to minimum wage-fixing mechanisms. Across years and databases roughly three in five countries that apply a statutory minimum wage-fixing mechanism have signed the oldest Convention (C26), whereas roughly one in three has done so with the most recent Convention (C131). Obviously, many more countries could have signed the Conventions. Only a few countries have signed the Conventions but do not have a statutory minimum wage-fixing mechanism. Among others a few EU28 countries rely solely on collective bargaining for minimum wage setting, and consider that as a national wide fixing mechanism. If countries apply a statutory wage-fixing mechanism, does the minimum wage then cover the entire dependent labour force? Globally, more than half of the countries with a statutory minimum wage apply differentiated minimum wages. Most frequently reported breakdowns are by industry or occupation. Countries with multiple minimum wage rates mimic collective bargaining, particularly when they break down the rates by industry or occupation. The aim of this paper is to generate a Minimum Wage Policies Database (MWPDB) from the merged dataset. Using a set of rules for generating data from the source databases, we indicate for almost half of the 195 countries the presence or absence of a statutory minimum wage for all five years from 2011 to 2015. For 16 countries no valid data is available for any year. Particularly for Europe and South America, MWPDB has satisfactory number of observations, whereas the opposite holds for the small islands in Oceania. The MWPDB results show that approximately nine in ten countries do apply a minimum wage policy, and that this is slightly increasing between 2011 to 2015.

United States - Wage and Salary Workers Paid at or Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: High School Graduates or more was 1.00000 % 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: High School Graduates or more reached a record high of 4.90000 in January of 2010 and a record low of 1.00000 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 or Below Prevailing Federal Minimum Wage: 16 Years and Over: High School Graduates or more - 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.

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 paper takes a historical perspective and assesses the evolution of the institutional features in setting the minimum wage in Greece between 1975 and 2023. It also evaluates developments regarding the minimum wage level, its bite and alignment with productivity. The paper reviews the limited available empirical literature on the association of the minimum wage with labour market outcomes (average wages, employment, inequality). It presents new estimates of the elasticity of average wages to the minimum wage. One of the paper's key points is that the minimum wage setting mechanism has changed over time as the economic environment has changed. Reviewing the evolution of the minimum wage over time to evaluate whether the minimum wage follows productivity developments and whether the minimum wage bites leads to the second and third takeaways of the paper. The minimum wage follows productivity developments over the longer term but not always in the short term. The bite of the minimum wage is high and appears to be higher when government intervention in setting the minimum wage is higher. As for the impact of the minimum wage on average wages, the paper provides new estimates of the elasticity of the average to the minimum wage, using more precisely measured wage rates, which show a high elasticity of average to minimum wages. Finally, the review of the existing literature on the employment effects of the minimum wage shows that, as in other countries, the results are mixed with modest negative or no effects.

Federal Hourly Minimum Wage data was reported at 7.250 USD/Hour in Apr 2025. This stayed constant from the previous number of 7.250 USD/Hour for Mar 2025. Federal Hourly Minimum Wage data is updated monthly, averaging 3.350 USD/Hour from Oct 1938 (Median) to Apr 2025, with 1039 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 7.250 USD/Hour in Apr 2025 and a record low of 0.250 USD/Hour in Sep 1939. Federal Hourly Minimum Wage data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United States – Table US.G: Federal Hourly Minimum Wage.