Of all wage workers employed in Missouri, 2.6 percent, or 42,000 people, earn at or below the minimum wage. The majority of these workers earn less than the minimum wage while approximately 9,000 earn exactly minimum wage.
Missouri's statistics on minimum wage are very similar to national averages. In the United States, 2.7 percent of all wage laborers earn at or below the minimum wage. Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming also have wages very close to the national average with 2.6 - 2.7 percent of all wage workers in these states earning at or below minimum wage. Alaska, California, and Washington have a very low prevalence of minimum wage workers. As reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than one percent of the wage-earning population in those states earns at or below the federal minimum. The states with the largest percentage of wage earners earning at or below minimum wage are New Mexico (5.5 percent), Louisiana (5.1 percent), Alabama (4.6 percent) and West Virginia (4.2 percent).
Nationally, those earning minimum wage and below are most concentrated in service occupations with 9.1 percent of all employees in service occupations earning at or below minimum wage. The large proportion of minimum wage earners in the service occupations may reflect the tip credit provisions of the Federal minimum wage statutes whereby an employee that receives tips can be paid below the minimum wage provided that they earn at least $2.13 per hour and that their hourly wage combined with tips is equal to at least $5.15 per hour. Other occupations with large numbers of employees earning at or below minimum wage include farming, fishing, and forestry occupations as well as occupations in buildings and grounds cleaning and maintenance. Management and professional occupations have the smallest percentage of workers earning minimum wage.
The purchasing power of minimum wage has declined significantly since the current federal minimum wage was enacted as law in 1997. To have equivalent purchasing power of the federal minimum wage of $5.15 in 1997, the federal minimum wage in 2000 would had to have been $5.53. In 2005, the federal minimum wage would need to be $6.26 to achieve purchasing power parity with the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage that was passed in 1997.
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Posted September 27, 2005
