Pennsylvania’s minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009. Who actually earns that much?
New Jersey, Delaware, and other nearby states have increased their minimum wage, but Pennsylvania’s has been stuck for 17 years.
Pennsylvania’s minimum wage hasn’t 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.
Last year, some 42,900 Pennsylvania workers earned the minimum wage or less, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry’s annual report on the minimum wage, published this month.
That’s about a 9% decline from 2024. This group makes up less than 1% of all Pennsylvania workers. The state’s population of minimum-wage workers has dropped by roughly 42% in the last five years.
Still, hundreds of thousands who make more than minimum wage would see their wages rise if the Pennsylvania’s wage floor was set to $15 an hour.
Last year, 189,900 people in Pennsylvania (6.4% of hourly workers) earned at least $7.26 and up to $12 per hour.
Another 320,900 (10.8% of hourly workers) earned between $12.01 and $15 per hour.
Each of these groups making low wages in Pennsylvania — up to $7.25, up to $12, and up to $15 per hour — was smaller in 2025 than the year before.
That’s 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’s median wage rose to $20.95 per hour last year — roughly a $1 increase from 2024.
The report is based on data from a U.S. Census Bureau survey. Last year’s data is missing October figures due to the government shutdown, the report noted.
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.
Pennsylvania’s minimum wage is not enough money to cover a person’s basic needs, according to a living wage calculator 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.
Who actually made minimum wage last year?
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’s working population, they represent a disproportionate 81% of workers who earned $7.25 or less last year.
Nearly 79% of these workers are white, and roughly half have a high school diploma or less education.
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’s data, and tipped restaurant workers’ minimum wage is $2.83 by law.
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.
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.
Other sectors that employ these low-wage workers in Pennsylvania include hotels and lodging, retail, art and entertainment, hospitals, educational services, construction, and manufacturing.
Pennsylvania’s neighboring states have higher minimum wages
Despite efforts to raise Pennsylvania’s minimum wage, it lags behind that of neighboring states.
New Jersey’s minimum wage, which increased in January to $15.92 per hour, is over double that of Pennsylvania’s, 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.
Gov. Josh Shapiro has backed raising the minimum wage at every annual state budget address since he was elected. In February he called on the General Assembly to advance minimum wage legislation, adding that raising it to $15 an hour would save the state millions on entitlement programs like Medicaid.
“If you aren’t going to do this because it’s 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’s going to save us $300 million, shrink our entitlement budget by growing our workforce and putting more money back in workers’ pockets,” he said.