In my last post I mentioned the proportion of the work force that earns the minimum wage or less. I just checked with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to get the latest data. In 2003, using data from the BLS’s household survey, there were 138 million people working of which 73 million were paid by the hour. Of that number, 2.1 million, or 2.9% were paid the minimum wage or less. So the 2.9% number is probably an overestimate for the labor force as a whole.
Minimum Wage Data
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