Real Federal Minimum Wage

A month earlier, in July 2026, it was worth $2.18. The latest reading is the lowest value since December 1949.

The figure is the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, the rate since July 24, 2009, divided by the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers (CPI-U). It says what $7.25 would have bought at 1982-84 prices. No one is paid the figure shown; the legal rate is still $7.25. Because the dollar rate has not changed since 2009, every change since then comes from consumer prices, not from the law.

It is one national rate. Thirty states and the District of Columbia required more than $7.25 as of 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and where a state or city minimum is higher, that rate applies. Tipped workers can be paid a lower cash wage if tips make up the difference, and some young workers, students and workers with disabilities can be paid less. The series counts no workers: it is the buying power of one hourly rate, not anyone's income.

The series starts in January 1947, the first month of the CPI-U data used here. Before 1978 it is the rate for workers first covered by the 1938 law; groups added in 1961 and 1966 had lower rates for some years. Other price indexes, such as the ones the Economic Policy Institute uses, give different long-run comparisons, so figures from those sources are not this series. There is no value for October 2025, when BLS did not collect consumer prices during the federal government shutdown.

Real production-worker pay tracks what non-managers actually earn per hour after inflation, and the CPI Inflation Rate tracks the price index this page divides by.