What are the characteristics of minimum wage workers? Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
In 2014, about 1.3 million U.S. workers age 16 and over earned
exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
Another 1.7 million had wages below the federal
minimum. Together these workers make up 4 percent of all
hourly paid workers.
The proportion of hourly workers paid minimum wage or less was
well below the level of 13 percent in 1979 when data was first
collected on a regular basis and nearly the same as in 2013.
What were the characteristics of hourly workers paid at or below
minimum wage in 2013?
Nearly half were under age 25; this age group accounted for
about 20% of all hourly paid workers.
15% of employed teenagers earned minimum wage or less, as
compared to about 3% of workers over age 25
63% were women and 37% were men; 5% of women earned minimum
wage or less, as compared to 3% of men
65% were part-time workers and 35% were full-time workers
11% were in the West; 16% were in the Northeast; 26% were in
the Mid-west; 47% were in the South
65% were in service occupations, with 50% in food preparation
and serving related occupations
In this October 2013 seminar, Center Faculty Affiliate Sasha
Abramsky discussed his work researching and writing about today’s
poor for his new book The American Way of Poverty: How the
Other Half Still Lives.
Some policy analysts, policymakers and scholars argue that
low-wage workers should “work their way out of poverty” by
acquiring the human capital that would enable them to leave
poverty-level jobs.
The “working poor” are people who spend 27 weeks or more in a
year in the labor force either working or looking for work but
whose incomes fall below the poverty
level. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
about 9.5 million of people who spent at least 27 weeks in the
labor force were poor. That year, the working poor comprised 6.3
percent of all individuals in the labor force.
