Pennsylvania\u2019s minimum wage hasn\u2019t budged from the $7.25 federal minimum that was set in 2009. But the number of Pennsylvanians actually making that much per hour is small and shrinking.<\/p>\n
Last year, some 42,900 Pennsylvania workers earned the minimum wage or less, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry\u2019s annual report<\/a> on the minimum wage, published this month. <\/p>\n That\u2019s about a 9% decline from 2024. This group makes up less than 1% of all Pennsylvania workers. The state\u2019s population of minimum-wage workers has dropped by roughly 42% in the last five years. <\/p>\n Still, hundreds of thousands who make more than minimum wage would see their wages rise if the Pennsylvania\u2019s wage floor was set to $15 an hour. <\/p>\n Last year, 189,900 people in Pennsylvania (6.4% of hourly workers) earned at least $7.26 and up to $12 per hour. <\/p>\n Another 320,900 (10.8% of hourly workers) earned between $12.01 and $15 per hour.<\/p>\n Each of these groups making low wages in Pennsylvania \u2014 up to $7.25, up to $12, and up to $15 per hour \u2014 was smaller in 2025 than the year before. <\/p>\n That\u2019s due in part to increasing wages across the state, the report said, as well as a lower number of hourly wage earners and a shrinking workforce overall. Pennsylvania\u2019s median wage rose to $20.95 per hour last year \u2014 roughly a $1 increase from 2024.<\/p>\n The report is based on data from a U.S. Census Bureau survey. Last year\u2019s data is missing October figures due to the government shutdown<\/a>, the report noted. <\/p>\n Some are exempt from federal and state minimum wage such as farmworkers, some seasonal workers, and newspaper delivery people. Workers who make much of their money in tips have a lower minimum wage. Workers from these categories were not excluded from data in the report. <\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Workers with a disability can make less than $7.25 an hour. UPenn research sheds light on what ending that practice has meant in some states.<\/a><\/p>\n Pennsylvania\u2019s minimum wage is not enough money to cover a person\u2019s basic needs, according to a living wage calculator<\/a> developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It estimates that the living wage for a single adult without a child in Pennsylvania is $23.32 per hour. <\/p>\n Who actually made minimum wage last year?<\/p>\n In 2025, workers who made at or below the minimum wage in Pennsylvania were predominantly women. While they make up roughly 51% of the state\u2019s working population, they represent a disproportionate 81% of workers who earned $7.25 or less last year. <\/p>\n Nearly 79% of these workers are white, and roughly half have a high school diploma or less education. <\/p>\n Nearly three-quarters of them work in food preparation and serving jobs. Though it should be noted that tips and overtime for restaurant workers are not accounted for in the report\u2019s data, and tipped restaurant workers\u2019 minimum wage is $2.83 by law.<\/p>\n Unmarried people and young workers aged 16 to 24 also make up a disproportionately large segment of Pennsylvanians making minimum wage or less, the report says. <\/p>\n Working full time at the minimum wage, a worker would make $15,080 annually. But 80% of Pennsylvania workers who made minimum wage or less last year worked part-time. <\/p>\n Other sectors that employ these low-wage workers in Pennsylvania include hotels and lodging, retail, art and entertainment, hospitals, educational services, construction, and manufacturing. <\/p>\n Pennsylvania\u2019s neighboring states have higher minimum wages<\/p>\n Despite efforts to raise<\/a> Pennsylvania\u2019s minimum wage, it lags behind that of neighboring states. <\/p>\n New Jersey\u2019s minimum wage, which increased in January to $15.92 per hour, is over double that of Pennsylvania\u2019s<\/a>, and 22 states are soon increasing their minimum wage or have done so already this year. In Delaware, the minimum hourly wage has risen from $9.25 in 2021 to $15 in 2025, thanks to legislation mandating the gradual increase<\/a>. <\/p>\n Gov. Josh Shapiro<\/a> has backed raising the minimum wage at every annual state budget address since he was elected. In February he called on the General Assembly<\/a> to advance minimum wage legislation, adding that raising it to $15 an hour would save the state millions on entitlement programs like Medicaid. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you aren\u2019t going to do this because it\u2019s the right thing to do, or because it would let more families put food on the table for their kids, then do it because it\u2019s going to save us $300 million, shrink our entitlement budget by growing our workforce and putting more money back in workers\u2019 pockets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania\u2019s minimum wage hasn\u2019t budged from the $7.25 federal minimum that was set in 2009. But the number…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[60523,28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-130279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-minimum-wage-earners-pennsylvania-labor","9":"tag-pennsylvania","10":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","11":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}