Minimum Wage Workers in Missouri: 2007 (PDF)

In 2007, 33,000 hourly-paid workers in Missouri had earnings at or below the prevailing Federal minimum wage¹, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. (See chart A.) Regional Commissioner Stanley W. Suchman noted that workers paid at or below the Federal minimum wage accounted for 2.1 percent of the 1.6 million hourly-paid wage and salary workers in Missouri². Fifteen States had a lower percentage of workers in this pay range than did Missouri. (See table 1.)

Chart A.  Employed wage and salary workers paid hourly rates with earnings at or below the prevailing Federal minimum wage in Missouri, annual averages, 2000-07

According to 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS) estimates, 75.9 million workers in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.5 percent of all wage and salary workers. Of those paid by the hour, 267,000 were reported as earning exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage. Nearly another 1.5 million were reported as earning wages below the minimum³ . Together, these 1.7 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 2.3 percent of all hourly-paid workers in the nation.

The number of hourly-paid workers in Missouri earning the prevailing Federal minimum wage or less was 33,000 in 2007, down from a peak of 58,000 in 2003. Women accounted for 64 percent (21,000) of the hourly-paid workers who earned the prevailing Federal minimum wage or less in Missouri in 2007, while men accounted for the remainder (12,000). In 2007, 2.5 percent of all women workers were earning at or below the Federal minimum, down considerably from a peak of 5.1 percent in 2003. In comparison, only 1.6 percent of male workers earned at or below the Federal minimum wage in 2007, compared with 2.1 percent in 2003. (See table A and chart B.)

Chart B.  Percentage of employed wage and salary workers paid hourly rates with earnings at or below the prevailing Federal minimum wage in Missouri, by sex, annual averages, 2000-07

Overall, Missouri wage and salary workers that received hourly rates⁴ had median hourly earnings of $11.79 in 2007; nationally, the median was $11.95. The wage differential between men and women in Missouri was greater than the national average, with 2007 median hourly rates for men and for women in the State at $13.45 and $10.50, respectively. (See table A.) For the United States as a whole, the comparable figures were $12.95 for men and $10.98 for women.

Among the states, Mississippi, at 4.5 percent, had the highest proportion of hourly-paid workers earning at or below the prevailing Federal minimum wage in 2007, followed by Louisiana, at 4.3 percent. Texas, Massachusetts, and South Carolina had the next highest shares, 4.0 percent each. California, Montana, Oregon, and Washington had the lowest shares, each with less than 1 percent of hourly-paid workers earning the Federal minimum or below. It should be noted that as of January 1, 2008, 32 states and the District of Columbia had laws establishing minimum wage standards that exceeded the Federal level of $5.85 per hour⁵. (See table 1 and chart C.)

Chart C. Minimum wage laws in the States, January 1, 2008

Technical Note

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' data on minimum wage earners are derived from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a nationwide sample survey of households that includes questions enabling the identification of hourly-paid workers and their hourly wage rate. Data in this summary are annual averages.

Minimum wage data, particularly levels, for each year are not strictly comparable with data for earlier years because of the introduction of revised population controls used in the CPS. The effect of the revised population controls on the minimum wage estimates is unknown. However, the effect of the new controls in 2007 on the monthly CPS estimates for the U.S. was to increase the December 2006 employment level by 153,000 and the unemployment level by 10,000. The updated controls had little or no effect on unemployment rates and other ratios. For additional information, see "Adjustments to Household Survey Population Estimates in January 2007" in the February 2007 issue of Employment and Earnings, available on the Internet at www.bls.gov/cps/cps07adj.pdf.

It should be noted that the presence of a sizable number of workers with reported wages below the minimum does not necessarily indicate violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, as there are exemptions to the minimum wage provisions of the law. The estimates of the numbers of minimum and subminimum wage workers presented in the accompanying tables pertain to workers paid at hourly rates; salaried and other non-hourly workers are excluded. As such, the actual number of workers with earnings at or below the prevailing minimum is undoubtedly understated. Research has shown that a relatively smaller number and share of salaried workers and others not paid by the hour have earnings that, when translated into hourly rates, are at or below the minimum wage. However, BLS does not routinely estimate hourly earnings for non-hourly workers because of data concerns that arise in producing these estimates. For further information, see Steven Haugen and Earl Mellor, "Estimating the number of minimum wage workers," Monthly Labor Review, January 1990 (PDF 415K).

The prevailing Federal minimum wage was $2.90 in 1979, $3.10 in 1980, and $3.35 in 1981-89. The minimum wage rose to $3.80 in April 1990, $4.25 in April 1991, $4.75 in October 1996, and $5.15 in September 1997. On July 24, 2007, the Federal minimum wage increased to $5.85 per hour from $5.15 per hour. Data in this report reflect the average number of workers earning the prevailing Federal minimum wage or less for the year (those who earned $5.15 or less from January 2007 through July 2007 and those who earned $5.85 or less from August 2007 through the end of the year).

This release is available on our Web site at www.bls.gov/ro7/. If you have additional questions, you can contact the Mountain-Plains Information Office at 816-285-7000. Information in this release will be made available to sensory impaired individuals upon request. Voice phone: 202-691-5200; TDD message referral phone number: 1-800-877-8339.