Youth, student and training subminimum wages

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is not the lowest lawful rate for everyone. The Fair Labor Standards Act carves out a small set of lower rates for young and new workers and for students in approved programs. Each has its own conditions, and none of them overrides a higher state or local rate that makes no exception for the group.

The youth minimum wage

Section 6(g) of the FLSA lets any employer pay an employee who is under 20 years old a wage of not less than $4.25 an hour during the first 90 consecutive calendar days after that employee is first employed by that employer. The clock counts calendar days from the first day of work, and a break in service does not pause it. The rate ends the day the worker turns 20, even if the 90 days have not run out.

The $4.25 figure is written into the statute and has not moved with the general minimum: DOL’s fact sheet states that the youth wage does not rise when the regular minimum rises. A worker can be paid the youth wage by more than one employer, because the 90-day window belongs to each employer separately. No training requirement attaches to it.

The statute pairs the rate with an anti-displacement rule. An employer may not discharge anyone, cut their hours, wages or benefits, or otherwise displace them in order to hire someone at the youth wage, and doing so is treated as a violation of the Act’s anti-retaliation section. DOL’s fact sheet adds that cycling workers through 90-day stints at the youth rate would itself be a displacement violation.

Full-time students

Section 14 of the Act lets the Wage and Hour Administrator issue certificates allowing retail or service establishments, agricultural employers and institutions of higher education to pay full-time students at not less than 85 percent of the applicable minimum wage. Part 519 of the regulations sets the terms. A full-time student is one receiving mostly daytime instruction at a bona fide educational institution, by that institution’s definition; status continues through vacations. An employer that will use no more than six students at subminimum rates on any workday can start on temporary authorization once it files the application and posts a notice; larger programs need the certificate first, and the regulations limit the share of total hours that certificated student employment may take. A certificate runs for at most one year, is never retroactive, and must be posted where employees can see it.

Learners and student-learners

Part 520 covers special certificates for messengers, learners, student-learners and apprentices. A learner is someone being trained for an occupation that is not a recognized apprenticeable trade and who produces little of value when first employed; the learning period is normally capped at 240 hours, and a person stops being a learner after 240 hours of related training in the previous three years. A student-learner is at least 16 (18 in hazardous occupations), enrolled in an accredited school, and employed part time under a bona fide vocational training program approved by a state board of vocational education or similar body. The regulations state the minimum rate for student-learners as 75 percent of the applicable minimum wage. Every worker employed under one of these certificates must be marked as such in payroll records, and the records kept for three years.

How the rates combine

DOL’s fact sheet answers a common question directly: the section 14 rates are computed from the regular minimum wage, not from the youth wage, so they cannot be stacked to produce a rate below $4.25 for a young worker.

State and local law

Where a state or city sets a minimum above $4.25 and makes no exception for workers under 20, the higher rate applies. States vary: DOL’s state table notes that some states set subminimum rates for minors or students or a training wage for new hires, but does not display them. The state pages on this site reproduce DOL’s table and its notes; a state’s youth or training provisions are found in that state’s own law, not here.

Workers with disabilities

Section 14(c) of the Act, a separate certificate program with its own regulations and history, is outside this page.

In the wage data

OEWS does not identify who is paid a subminimum rate. The occupation tables for jobs with many young and student workers, such as cashiers or food preparation workers, show a 10th percentile that may sit at or near the state minimum; whether any of those workers were on a youth or student rate cannot be read from the table. The rules above describe what federal law permits, not what any employer actually pays.