Minimum wage 2020 – US states and cities

The US federal minimum wage for 2020 is set a $ 7.25 per hour. That means a person working full time on minimum wage will earn something like $ 1,000 per month.

However, not all states follow the US federal minimum wage. Most states actually have their own minimums. Some, such as California and District of Columbia, have minimum wages that are close to twice as much as federal one. Below are the hourly rates for the states that have set specific minimum wages set above federal levels:

Some counties and cities have also set their minimum wages above or below both federal and state levels. According to the Economic Policy Institute website, 44 of those entities have done so. Their site does not list individual minimum wages for them, but we researched it and are providing them here. All of them come directly from an official source or a local news source when official information was not found.

We provide the links so you can check each individual county or city on your own. You are advised to do so if you want to run a business in the location, as some minimum wage laws can have some particularities in some of them.

Below are some of them:

Minimum wage around the world

The first nationwide minimum wage law was created in New Zealand in 1894. Australia followed suit in 1896 by passing minimum wage laws to six different industries that usually paid low wages to their employers.

In the United States, the first state to pass a minimal wage law was Massachusetts in 1912. It was only in 1938 that a federal minimum wage law was passed, under the government of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Minimum wage is not universally adopted worldwide. Even countries hailed as great social democracies with plenty of benefits to employees, like Sweden and Norway, do not have minimum wage laws. In Germany, a federal minimum wage was enacted only in 2014. Finland, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Cyprus and Switzerland also do not have any federal minimum wage laws. Some of those countries, however, rely on collective bargaining with labor unions to set minimum wages for specific industries.

As the US dollar grew stronger in comparison to currencies from other countries elsewhere in the world, California and the District of Columbia now boast the highest minimum wages. But Australia ($14.56) and Luxembourg ($13.02) come close. Monaco ($11.72), New Zealand ($11.70), France ($11.40), Ireland ($10.77), Belgium ($10.70), San Marino ($10.38), Netherlands ($10.26, though they have minimum wages set by age), Canada ($10.20), United Kingdom ($10.04), Germany ($9.97) and Israel ($8.09) have minimum wages above US federal level, according to this Wikipedia article.

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