The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. It has not moved since July 24, 2009, which makes this the longest stretch without an increase since the minimum wage was created in 1938.
For scale on how long that is, someone who started a minimum wage job the week that rate took effect has now worked 17 years without the floor beneath them ever rising by a penny.
The number comes from the Fair Labor Standards Act, the 1938 law that created the federal minimum wage at 25 cents an hour. Congress has raised it 22 times since then, usually every one to ten years. Raising it requires an act of Congress signed by the president. Unlike Social Security or many state minimum wages, it does not adjust automatically for inflation. It sits at whatever number Congress last set until Congress sets a new one.
Here is where it gets worse. If you work for tips, your employer can legally pay you a base wage of $2.13 an hour. That rate has not changed since 1991. The law says tips have to bring you up to at least $7.25 total, and if they do not, the employer is supposed to cover the difference. Whether that actually happens depends entirely on the employer.
The federal number is a floor, not a ceiling, and most of the country has moved past it. Thirty states plus Washington DC set higher rates. Twenty-two states raised their wage this year, and 88 jurisdictions across 22 states and 66 cities made increases. Missouri, Montana, and Nebraska hit $15 for the first time. Washington state is at $17.13. Nineteen states plus DC now tie their minimum wage to inflation so it adjusts automatically each year.
But 20 states still sit at $7.25. Five of them, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee, have no state minimum wage law at all and simply default to the federal number. Georgia and Wyoming have the lowest state rates in the country.
That creates real gaps. A worker doing the same job in Washington state and Texas is separated by $9.88 an hour, which is over $20,000 a year on full time hours. Same work, same company in some cases, different zip code.
Congress has been trying. In June, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Representative Delia Ramirez of Illinois introduced the Living Wage for All Act, a bicameral bill to take the federal minimum to $25 an hour. It uses a two track phase in, requiring large corporate employers to hit $25 by 2032 and giving everyone else until 2039. After that, the minimum would automatically rise to two thirds of the national median wage, which sits around $31 an hour as of the first quarter of this year. The bill would also eliminate subminimum wages, including the $2.13 tipped rate.
Mejia, one of the House sponsors, said no one working full time should be struggling to survive, and that the country needs an economy reflecting 2026 rather than one stuck over a decade in the past.
The opposition argument has not changed in decades. Lawmakers and industry groups who fight these increases say higher labor costs mean fewer jobs and higher prices, and that small businesses absorb the damage first. That case has kept every version of this bill from passing, including the $15 push in 2019 and the $17 version in 2023.
Nothing about the current Congress suggests this one moves either. Which means the practical reality stays what it has been for 17 years. If you want a raise in the federal minimum wage, it is not coming from Washington. It is coming from your state legislature, your city council, or a ballot initiative.
For the 20 states with none of those in motion, $7.25 remains the answer.
