Who Makes Minimum Wage? Young Women in the Service Industry

Using information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, NPR’s Planet Money has made some cool charts that show exactly who is making minimum wage in America, pegged to the recently discussed raises in various states across the country and potentially even nation-wide.

Planet Money demonstrates that the vast majority of those in the United States working minimum wage jobs are in the “Leisure and Hospitality” and “Wholesale and Retail” fields and that women disproportionately hold those jobs. Because of this dominance, women make up a huge proportion of those holding minimum wage jobs of all kinds.

Interestingly, though young people are a big part of the minimum wage work force, they don’t make up the majority of those individuals in the country working for an hourly wage; most hourly workers are between 25 and 54. Head over to NPR to see the rest of the visuals.

Though Senate democrats are pushing for a raise to the minimum wage across the country that would bump it over $10, they still haven’t decided exactly what that raise would be and – of course – whether it would fly with Republicans.