Minimum wage by state
The basic state minimum wage for selected years from 1968 to 2024, alongside the federal minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act, from the Wage and Hour Division's own historical table.
Publisher
- Organization
- U.S. Department of Labor
- Publisher’s dataset
- Changes in Basic Minimum Wages in Non-Farm Employment Under State Law: Selected Years 1968 to 2024
- File or API used
- https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/history
- Retrieval script
scripts/fetch-dol-minimum-wage.py- Methodology
- https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/history
Coverage
- Geography
- Nation (the federal rate), states, and the District of Columbia
- Time coverage
- 1968-2024 (selected years only; see caveats)
- Update frequency
- Annual
- Published
- January 2025
- Retrieved
- September 9, 2026
- License of the records
- Public domain. U.S. federal government work.
- Rows
- 1,622 observations, 1968-2024
Measures
| Measure | What it measures | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Basic minimum wage | The basic state minimum wage per hour under state law, or for geo US the federal minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act (the federal floor, not a national average of state rates), for the years this table publishes. | usd per_hour |
Caveats
- Before 2000 the table carries only fourteen selected years, not every year; from 2000 on it carries every year.
- Idaho's minimum wage is set equal to the federal rate; a training wage and tipped minimum the state also sets are not in this table.
- A cell given as a range, an employer-size-based rate, or a per-day or per-week rate was not stored: a published range is not a value.
- The table prints the rate in effect when it was compiled for each year, not necessarily the rate in effect for the whole year.
- Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee have no state minimum wage law in any year this table covers and carry no observations.
Pages built on this dataset
How to cite
Understand Idaho, “Changes in Basic Minimum Wages in Non-Farm Employment Under State Law: Selected Years 1968 to 2024”, compiled from U.S. Department of Labor, Changes in Basic Minimum Wages in Non-Farm Employment Under State Law: Selected Years 1968 to 2024. Retrieved September 9, 2026. https://understandidaho.com/data/dol-minimum-wage/.
Cite U.S. Department of Labor directly for the figures themselves.
This page was last updated .