The United States is made up of a patchwork of minimum wage laws with 29 states and D.C. having a rate higher than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour. Democrats are currently pushing to see the federal rate more than doubled to $15 per hour but efforts to include the plan in Covid-19 relief legislation have stalled. 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, are below the $7.25 federal minimum wage. In all seven of those states, the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour applies according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The District of Columbia has the highest minimum wage in the U.S. at $15.00 an hour, followed by California ($14.00) and Washington ($13.69).
This chart shows state minimum wage legislation.
