Minimum Wage Workers
Characteristics of Those Employed at or Below the Minimum Wage
In 2012, 75.3 million workers in the United States age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 59 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 1.6 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 2.0 million had wages below the Federal minimum. Together, these 3.6 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 4.7 percent of all hourly paid workers. The following are some highlights from the 2012 data. Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about…
