Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers: 2012 In 2012, 75.3
million workers in the United States age 16 and over were paid
at hourly rates, representing 59.0 percent of all wage and
salary workers. 1 Among those paid by the hour, 1.6 million
earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per
hour. About 2.0 million had wages below the federal minimum.2
Together, these 3.6 million workers with wages at or below the
federal minimum made up 4.7 percent of all hourly paid workers.
Tables 1 through 10 present data on a wide array of demographic
and socioeconomic characteristics for hourly paid workers
earning at or below the federal minimum wage. The following are
some highlights from the 2012 data. - Minimum wage workers tend
to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only
about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up about half
of those paid the Federal minimum wage or less. Among employed
teenagers paid by the hour, about 21 percent earned the minimum
wage or less, compared with