Minimum Wage Workers in US

In a recent FACTANK blog post, Drew DeSilver wrote “Who Makes Minimum Wage?” that reports 3.55 million hourly workers are at or below the federal minimum, in 2012.  Minimum wage earners comprised 4.7% of the 75.3 million hourly workers in the country and 2.8% of all workers in the US. By comparison in 1979, this group represented 13.4% of hourly workers and 7.9% of hourly and salary workers. These numbers are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) which has been studying minimum-wage workers since 1979.  The present-day total number of minimum wage workers, 3.55 million, does not include salaried workers or those from the 19 states and District of Columbia with a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum.  Nearly two million individuals of this group earned less than minimum wage as they are a part of exempt groups, such as tipped employees and certain disabled workers. 

Minimum wage workers are mostly White (78%) and work part-time (64%). Half of this group are women and 50.6% are between the ages of 16 and 24 years. Half of these workers are employed in leisure and hospitality industry. The largest percentage of minimum wage workers lives in the southern region of the US (7.3%) while the smallest percentage lives in the pacific region (1.5%). 

Read more:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/
http://www.pewresearch.org/author/ddesilver/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/19/who-makes-minimum-wage/
http://www.bls.gov/bls/blsminwagedata.htm

Household Income Left Behind In Recovery

Rakesh Kochar, writing for the Pew Research Center, examined household income during the recent recession and recovery.  From 2007 to 2009, the median household income fell 4.2%, and while the economy began to turn around and businesses started to rebuild, incomes continued to drop.  From 2009 to 2011, as the U.S. embarked on a sluggish recovery, the median income failed to improve.  In fact, the median household income fell almost as much (4.1%) during the recovery years as during the recession.  After a 5.7% decrease in household income due to the 1973 recession, incomes salvaged a 2.3% increase in the following 2 year recovery period.  The 1980 to 1982 recession drove incomes down 5.0%, but in the subsequent two-year recovery, incomes rebounded with a 2.4% improvement.  This prolonged period of income losses reflects a greater trend from the past decade.  The highest median household income was $54,932 in 1999, and since then, that level has only been approached in 2007, when incomes were $54,489.  

Wages Drop

On June 28^th the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its County Employment and Wages Fourth Quarter 2011 report.  The report states that the average weekly wage decreased by 1.7% to $955 from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the fourth quarter in 2011.  This decrease marks only the fifth wage loss since the Census began tracking the figure in 1978.  Olmsted, Minnesota experienced the greatest decrease in weekly wages amongst large counties, with pay dropping 21.3%.  In Olmsted the education and health services industries faced the most severe losses with a total wage decline of $287.3 million (-29.1%).

The large counties (population of at least 75,000) leading the way in employment gains were Kern, California; Fort Bend, Texas; Weld, Colorad; Williamson, Tennessee; and Utah County, Utah.  These counties had the highest percentage increase in employment, all of them seeing gains of at least 4.3%.  On a grander scale, the U.S. added 1.8 million jobs since December 2010, putting the national employment at 131.3 million.