Minimum Wage Workers by Marital Status

Reading this table

The rows count wage and salary workers paid hourly rates: people aged 16 and over who report being paid by the hour at their main job in the Current Population Survey, about 58 percent of all wage and salary workers; salaried workers and the self-employed are outside the table. At minimum wage means an hourly rate exactly equal to the prevailing federal minimum, $7.25 since July 2009; below means a lower reported rate, which may be lawful (tipped work, full-time students, workers under 20 in their first 90 days, jobs outside FLSA coverage) or rounding in the answer; the report does not separate the reasons. Rates are before tips, overtime and commissions. Number of workers is in thousands; percent distribution is each row's share of the national total in that column; percentage of workers paid hourly rates is the share of the row's own hourly workers at or below the minimum. A state minimum above $7.25 is not counted; the minimum-wage pages give each rate. 2024 annual averages.

Marital status has three categories in this table: never married; married, spouse present; and widowed, divorced or separated (which BLS groups with married, spouse absent). Under each, the age split repeats the 16 to 24 and 25 and older bands from the age page, with 25 to 54 and 55 and older under the second. Marital status mostly tracks age: the never-married group is young, and the young are the group most often paid the minimum, so the table does not show an effect of marriage itself. BLS prints one table in three blocks (total, men, women); each block's percent distribution sums to 100 on its own.