From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers: 2005
According to Current Population Survey estimates for 2005, 75.6 million American workers were paid at hourly rates, representing 60.1 percent of all wage and salary workers. Of those paid by the hour, 479,000 were reported as earning exactly $5.15, the prevailing Federal minimum wage. Another 1.4 million were reported as earning wages below the minimum. Together, these 1.9 million workers with wages at or below the minimum made up 2.5 percent of all hourly-paid workers....
- Minimum wage workers tend to be young. About half of workers earning $5.15 or less were under age 25, and about one-fourth of workers earning at or below the minimum wage were age 16-19. Among employed teenagers, about 9 percent earned $5.15 or less. About 2 percent of workers age 25 and over earned the minimum wage or less. Among those age 65 and over, the proportion was about 3 percent.
- About 3 percent of women paid hourly rates reported wages at or below the prevailing Federal minimum, compared with under 2 percent of men.
- Less than 3 percent of white hourly-paid workers earned $5.15 or less. Among black, Asian, and Hispanic hourly-paid workers, about 2 percent earned the Federal minimum wage or less. For whites and Hispanics, women were twice as likely as men to earn $5.15 or less.
- Never-married workers, who tend to be young, were more likely to earn the minimum wage or less than married workers.
- Among hourly-paid workers age 16 and over, 2 percent of those who had a high school diploma but had not gone on to college earned the minimum wage or less.
- Part-time workers (persons who usually work less than 35 hours per week) were more likely than their full-time counterparts to be paid $5.15 or less (about 6 percent versus 1 percent).
- By occupational group, the highest proportion of workers earning at or below the Federal minimum wage occurred in service occupations, at about 8 percent. About three in four workers earning $5.15 or less in 2005 were employed in service occupations, mostly in food preparation and service jobs. The proportion of hourly-paid workers whose earnings were reported at or below $5.15 was lowest for persons employed in management, professional, and related occupations and natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations (less than 1 percent for both).
- The industry with the highest proportion of workers with reported hourly wages at or below $5.15 was leisure and hospitality (about 14 percent). About three-fifths of all workers paid at or below the Federal minimum wage were employed in this industry, primarily in the food services and drinking places component. For many of these workers, tips and commissions supplement the hourly wages received.