Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Information on the earnings of employed persons derived from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Links to annual report Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers, data, and laws and regulations. Annual tables reflect wage and salary workers paid hourly rates with earnings at or below the prevailing Federal minimum wage, by industry, occupation, and selected characteristics.
Davis-Bacon Wage Determinations are locally prevailing wages issued by Wage & Hour Division of Dept. of Labor, under the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, as Amended for all federal government construction contracts and most contracts for federally assisted construction over $2,000.
Department of Labor:
Historical table that features state minimum wages and the federal minimum wage for selected years during the covered time period.
Includes laws and regulations including link to map and details about state minimum wage laws
Map and table of minimum hourly wages for tipped employees, by state
Historical state and sub-state minimum wage data
Historical state and sub-state minimum wage levels for the United States. From these daily minimum wage increases, we create state and sub-state panels at daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual frequencies. The state datasets span May 1974 to July 2016 and the sub-state datasets include city and county changes from January 2004 to July 2016.
Inflation and the Real Minimum Wage: A Fact Sheet by Craig K. Elwell. Congressional Research Service 7-5700 R42973, January 8, 2014
Basic information about its creation, calculation, and history. Changes over the years are given in a table: The Statutory Minimum Wage, Hourly Earnings, and Inflation.
Economic Policy Institute:
Includes data on how many people are affected state-by-state, along with information about trends on the minimum wages value over time.
National Conference of State Legislatures chart gives minimum wage for each state, plus whether increases are tied to Federal minimum wage, and if and how it is indexed to automatic adjustments.
State Minimum Wage Rates: 1983-2014 and 2020 from Tax Policy Center
Download the Excel or PDF file to retrieve data for all years.
For additional historical minimum wage statistics, try The Book of the States.
EIU Market Indicators and Forecasts has recent data.
The International Labour Organization published the Global Wage Report 2018/19, which "reviews the main trends in wages in developed, emerging and developing countries. It also analyses inequality in the labour market and in household income." Reports for earlier years are also available.
Data used for Part I of this report are available in the ILO Global Wage Database. Data cover minimum wages, average wages, low pay, earnings dispersion and labour income share, and are available from 1995+.
Minimum Wages around the World
Current year minimum wage in the local currency. The links are made available through the website of the WageIndicator Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to labor market transparency by providing accurate wage and wage related information.
TRAVAIL is the ILO's legal database on minimum wages.
World Bank International Finance Corporation's Labor Market Regulation page includes tables of minimum wage data from 2006+.
Library databases (Princeton only) with minimum wage data:
National Survey of State Laws
NCSL Minimum Wage Legislation Database - "Minimum wage bills from the current legislative session are available in a searchable database. You can search by state, bill number, author, status or keyword, or track all minimum wage-related bills by leaving the search boxes blank. You also can track specific issues, by selecting a topic, including proposed increases to the state minimum wage, indexing of future increases to the cost-of-living, tipped wages, subminimum wages, state authority over local minimum wages, Constitutional amendments, or other issues."
Open Government Guide for each state's open records and open meetings laws.
