How America’s Minimum Wage Compares

Feb 11, 2021 / By Elaine Belsito
Horsesmouth Assistant Editor
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Chart Talk: Moves to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 in phases by 2025 have proven controversial. How does the U.S. wage compare with other developed countries?

Statista reports:

Efforts by Democrats in Congress to more than double the $7.25 U.S. federal minimum wage have stalled. In an interview on Friday, President Biden said that he does not expect the Raise the Wage Act of 2021 to make it into Covid-19 relief legislation due to Senate rules. Moves to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 in phases up to 2025 have proven controversial and an analysis released on Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that it could have both positive and negative impacts.

As the debate rumbles on, how does the current $7.25 federal minimum wage compare to other developed countries? It has to of course be mentioned that some U.S. states have moved to introduce even higher minimum wage thresholds with California and Washington notable examples where minimum hourly pay is higher than $13. OECD data shows that the U.S. trails many developed countries in the minimum wage league such as Australia where the rate of pay was $12.60 in 2019 constant prices at purchasing power parity. While France and Germany are also ahead of the current U.S. federal minimum wage, more than doubling it to $15 per hour would catapult the U.S. to the very top of the OECD’s ranking.

Source: Statista

Comments

Is there any other developed country that has as much disparity of cost-of-living within its borders? The cost of living in rural Alabama or Mississippi might be less than HALF than in NYC or San Fransico. Why would the US want a national minimum wage that does not reflect this disparity?
Mark, I think the answer is in the word "minimum." That's the floor for all labor.

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