Where Data Tells the Story
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The United States is made up of a patchwork of minimum wage laws with 30 states and D.C. having a rate higher than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour. This is according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. California's current rate of $16.50 ranks towards the top of the country and is only surpassed by the minimum wages of Washington and Washington D.C., while being matched by New York City and closely followed by rates in Connecticut and the Portland metro area. The federal minimum wage was first introduced under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 which also established overtime and child labor standards for full-time and part-time workers.
Across the country, five U.S. states have not adopted a minimum wage - Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee. Another two, Georgia and Wyoming, have a minimum wage below the $7.25 federal minimum. In all seven of those states, the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour applies in accordance to the Fair Labor Standards Act, even though there are exceptions to its coverage. 13 more states have a minimum wage identical to the federal minimum wage, bringing the number of states where minimum wage workers earn only $7.25 per hour to 20. A handful of states, among them New Jersey, Georgia, Illinois and Ohio, also carve out exceptions for smaller employers and there are several more exceptions from minimum wage depending on the state.
While some U.S. states have been increasing their minimum wage rates in recent years - some by quite a bit to battle real wage decline due to inflation - federal minimum wage states have been at a standstill since the last U.S. federal minimum wage increase in 2009. This is resulting in the gap between different U.S. minimum wages growing increasingly larger, with the ones currently closest to the nationwide rate of $7.25 being West Virginia's $8.75 and Montana's $10.55.
But there have also been headwinds for minimum wage. California voters last year rejected a ballot measure to increase the state's minimum wage from then $16 to $18 an hour. The question was posed during the U.S. election on November 5, but the results were only finalized two weeks later due to the narrow margin of the measure's defeat. The result was an unexpected one in a blue state like California, but also fell in line with other election results from this year, like Californians voting to reverse parts of criminal justice reform and deciding not to ban forced prison labor.