New BLS Report: How Did Minimum Wage Workers Fare Last Year?

Keeping an eye on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) website is a smart move. BLS provides the Department of Labor with data and statistics on wage earners and job seekers, so it’s a trusted resource for anyone in the US labor market today.

In addition to its Monthly Labor Review and Employment Situation Summary, BLS puts out occasional publications on a wide variety of topics that can affect you and your job search, such as consumer expenditures, extended mass layoffs, and changes in the labor force.

This past month, the bureau dropped an interesting new report analyzing the characteristics of minimum wage workers during 2022. Understanding these distinctions is important for everyone who cares about upward mobility and fair compensation for all workers.

BLS Report August 2023 Quick Highlights:

• 2022 continued an annual downward trend of hourly paid workers in the US earning the federal minimum wage.
• Minimum wage workers tend to be young, mostly teenagers, with part-time workers more likely to earn minimum wage.
• Gender, race, and education play a role, but differences are relatively small across these demographics.
• Service industry positions like food-related jobs continue to have the highest concentration of minimum wage workers.

Among the 78.7 million US workers 16 and older receiving hourly wages in 2022, 141,000 individuals earned precisely the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, while an additional 882,000 workers received even lower wages. Together they represented 1.3% of all hourly paid workers, a relatively unchanged figure compared to 2021 but a significant drop from 13.4% in 1979, when data on this topic was first regularly collected.

Age and gender

Minimum wage workers skew young, with workers under 25 comprising only one-fifth of hourly paid workers but representing 45% of minimum wage earners. Among hourly workers, it is more common for women to be paid at or below the existing federal minimum (around 2% vs. 1% men).

Race/ethnicity and education

Race and ethnicity seem to play a minimal role, as approximately 1% of White, Asian, and Hispanic workers, along with about 2% of Black workers, earn minimum wage or less. But people’s educational level does make a difference in who makes minimum wage: 2% of hourly paid workers 16 and older with some college education or an associate's degree compared to about 1% of employees without a high school diploma, with high school but no college, or with a bachelor's degree or better.

Marital and full-time/part-time status

Among never-married workers (who tend to be younger on average), 2% of those paid hourly wages have earnings at or below the federal minimum wage, while 1% is the figure for married, widowed, divorced, or separated folks. Note the difference, however, that the type of employment makes: part-time personnel working fewer than 35 hours per week comprise 3% of minimum wage earners while only about 1% of full-time workers find themselves in this category.

Occupation, industry, and residence

Among occupations, service jobs have the highest percent of hourly paid employees earning the federal minimum wage or less, 4%; of those, nearly three-quarters work in food preparation and serving, often relying on tips as a supplement. In terms of industries, leisure/hospitality leads with 7% earning hourly wages at or below the federal minimum wage—and nearly three out of five minimum-wage workers are employed in restaurants, bars, and other food services. Finally, geographical location impacts minimum wage levels. This table breaks it down by state, 30 of which have higher minimum wages than the federal minimum.