David Berry, Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, August 2012

This report, part of an occasional series, presents statistics about minimum-wage workers in Minnesota. Specifically, it provides data regarding those hourly workers in the state who are paid the effective full minimum wage or less.1 The effective minimum is the higher of the applicable state and federal levels. The full minimum (e.g., the federal level of $7.25 an hour at the time of this report) is the amount that is not reduced in certain circumstances (see below on this page).

The report presents both trends and current descriptive statistics. All figures regarding Minnesota’s hourly workers at or below the minimum wage are estimates computed from the Current Population Survey (CPS), conducted monthly by the U.S. Census for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The report focuses on hourly workers partly because of data issues concerning salaried workers in the CPS2 and partly because many salaried workers are exempt from the federal and state minimum-wage laws as executive, administrative or professional employees.

Download Minnesota Minimum-Wage Report, 2011