States and Minimum Wage Workers

Posted on March 29, 2011 by townsend

• Texas leads nation in minimum wage workers, By Steve Clark, March 28, 2011, Brownsville Herald: “If there’s anything faintly resembling good news in a just-released report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, it’s that Texas’ share of hourly workers at or below minimum wage among U.S. states fell from 14.3 percent in 2009 to 9.5 percent in 2010. This just barely qualifies as a positive, however, since the number of Texas hourly workers at or below the prevailing federal minimum wage still increased by 76,000 over 2009. At 9.5 percent, Texas ties with Mississippi in terms of U.S. states with the highest proportion of hourly-paid workers earning at or below federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. Texas and Mississippi take top honors, therefore, in terms of having the lowest paid workers among all 50 states and the District of Columbia. To be fair, low wages are partly a function of lower cost of living. In Cameron County and the Rio Grande Valley, low wages and low cost of living – by some measures – go hand in hand, and are both a blessing and a curse in the view of economic development officials…”
• Lone Star State ties Mississippi in low pay count, By Patrick Danner, March 28, 2011, Houston Chronicle: “Texas tied with Mississippi for states having the highest percentage of hourly paid workers earning the minimum wage or less. Some 550,000 Texans, or 9.5 percent of hourly paid workers, made the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less last year. That’s up 76,000 workers, or 16 percent, from 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported…”