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Although the federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 a hour since 2009, most Americans are currently covered by greater minimums determined by local and state legislation - from Los Angeles to New York country to Washington, D.C. Organized labour and anti-poverty classes continue to drive for $15 a hour as the new standard for all workers paid hourly, although given Republican control of Congress that possibility appears dim.

While the concept of raising the minimum wage is broadly popular, a Pew Research Center survey this past August found partisan and racial differences in support. 52% of people favored increasing the federal minimum to $15 a hour, but that thought was favored by only 21% of Trump fans.

While substantial majorities of blacks and Hispanics confirmed a $15 federal minimum wage, 54% of whites opposed it. 1Adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage peaked in 1968 at $8.68. Since it was last increased in 2009, to the current $7.25 per hour, the federal minimum has lost about 9.6 percent of its purchasing power to inflation. Back in 2015, The Economist estimated that, given how rich the U.S. Is and also the pattern among other advanced economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, "One might expect America to pay a minimal wage around $12 a hour." 2Less than half of the 2.6 million hourly workers who were at or below the federal minimum in 2015 were ages 16 to 24.

An additional 23.3 percent are ages 25 to 34, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics; equally shares have remained more or less constant over the past decade. This 2.6 million represents less than 2 percent of all wage and salary workers. Says, plus the District of Columbia and nearly two dozen cities and counties, have put their own higher minimums. State hourly minimums vary from $7.50 at New Mexico to $11.50 from D.C., according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division. Together, these states include about 61% of the nation's working-age population, according to our analysis of U.S.

Census Bureau data. Among the cities that enacted higher minimums have been San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and San Diego, according to the National Employment Law Project. In 12 countries, the minimum wage rises automatically every year based on a cost-of-living formula. 4About 20.6 million people are currently "Near-minimum-wage" workers. We analyzed public-use microdata from the Current Population Survey, also came up with this quote of the total number of "Near-minimum" U.S. Workers - people who make more than the minimum wage within their state, but less than $10.10 a hour, and therefore also would benefit when the federal minimum is increased to that sum.

The near-minimum-wage workers are young, mostly white, and even more likely to be fethan male. A majority have no more than a high-school education. 5. The restaurant/food support industry is the single most significant company of near-minimum-wage workers. Our study also found that 3.75 million people making near-minimum salaries worked in this business. Among near-minimum workers aged 30 and younger, about 2.5 million work from restaurants or other food-service businesses. Because a lot of those workers presumably have been tipped, their real gross pay may be over $10.10 a hour. Correction: A previous version of the state minimum wage graphic reversed the colors of two countries in the map only.

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