Quick Answer: The federal minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour, unchanged since July 24, 2009 — the longest period without an increase in the law's history. Multiple bills to raise it have been introduced in Congress, including proposals to raise it to $15/hr or higher, but none have passed both chambers. In the meantime, 30 states and DC have set their own higher minimum wages, and most wage growth is happening at the state and city level.

  • Current federal rate: $7.25/hr (since 2009)
  • States with higher rates: 30 + DC
  • States at $7.25/hr: 20
  • Proposals in Congress: Raise the Wage Act ($17/hr by 2028), among others
  • Inflation-adjusted value of $7.25 in 2009 dollars: ~$5.30

Federal minimum wage increases have become one of the most debated topics in US labor policy. The rate has been stuck at $7.25 per hour for over 17 years — the longest freeze since the Fair Labor Standards Act created the federal minimum wage in 1938. Here's what it would actually take to raise it, what's currently proposed, and why the action has shifted to the states.

Why Hasn't the Federal Minimum Wage Increased Since 2009?

The short answer: Congress hasn't passed a bill to raise it. The federal minimum wage is set by statute — specifically, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) — and can only be changed by an act of Congress signed by the President. Unlike many state minimum wages, the federal rate has no automatic inflation adjustment. Every increase in the law's history has required a specific bill to pass both the House and Senate and be signed into law.

The last such bill was the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which amended the FLSA to phase the rate from $5.15/hr to $7.25/hr over three steps, with the final increase taking effect July 24, 2009. No increase has been enacted since.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. § 206) sets the federal minimum wage by statute. Section 6(a)(1) states the current rate. There is no provision in the FLSA for automatic cost-of-living adjustments — every increase requires new legislation.

What Proposals Are Currently in Congress?

Multiple bills to raise the federal minimum wage have been introduced in recent sessions of Congress:

  • Raise the Wage Act: The most prominent proposal, which would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $17.00 per hour by 2028, then index it to median wage growth. It would also phase out the tipped subminimum wage and the subminimum wage for workers with disabilities. Track the bill at Congress.gov.
  • Various alternative proposals: Other bills have proposed different target rates ($10.10/hr, $12/hr, $15/hr) and different phase-in schedules, reflecting the range of positions in Congress.

Passing a federal minimum wage increase requires 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster (unless passed through the budget reconciliation process, which has its own limitations), plus a majority in the House and the President's signature. This high threshold is the primary reason no increase has passed since 2007.

Reconciliation is often floated as a shortcut because it only needs a simple majority, but it comes with its own gatekeeper: the Byrd rule, which restricts reconciliation bills to provisions that are primarily budgetary rather than broad policy changes with only incidental fiscal effects. That constraint is not theoretical — in February 2021, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that a $15/hr phase-in attached to that year's reconciliation package did not meet the Byrd rule's test and had to be dropped from the bill. The Senate has traditionally treated the parliamentarian's rulings as binding rather than something to override on a party-line vote, which is part of why reconciliation hasn't turned out to be a reliable path for a minimum wage increase. Absent a change to the Senate's filibuster rules or 60 votes assembled the traditional way, a standalone bill — the same route every past increase has taken — remains the most likely mechanism if federal minimum wage increases are going to happen at all.

What's Happened Instead: The State-Level Shift

While the federal rate has been frozen, states have moved aggressively. As of 2026:

  • 30 states and DC have minimum wages above the federal $7.25/hr.
  • 14 states have minimum wages of $15.00/hr or higher.
  • Washington State has the highest at $17.13/hr.
  • 19 states have automatic inflation indexing, meaning their rates rise annually without new legislation.

This state-level action has effectively created two Americas for minimum wage workers: one where the rate is $15.00/hr or higher, and one where it remains $7.25/hr. The 20 states still at $7.25/hr are concentrated in the South and Midwest.

State Wage Growth vs. Federal Minimum Wage Increases: The Widening Gap

The scale of the gap becomes clearer when you line up how far individual states have moved while the federal rate has sat still. Washington's minimum wage climbed from $13.69/hr in 2021 to $17.13/hr in 2026 — a $3.44 increase in five years, driven entirely by the state's annual inflation-indexing formula rather than any new legislation. California went from $14.00/hr in 2021 to $16.90/hr in 2026. Connecticut has raised its rate every year since 2020, moving from $12.00/hr to $16.94/hr over that stretch. New York's statewide rate reached $16.00/hr in 2026, while New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County share a separate $17.00/hr floor that adjusts on its own schedule.

Florida is a useful contrast because it isn't an indexed state — its increases came from a phased schedule voters approved directly at the ballot box in 2020, moving the rate from $8.65/hr that year to $15.00/hr by September 2026 in annual $1.00 steps, without a single vote in the state legislature required along the way.

City governments have gone further still, often stacking a local ordinance on top of an already-elevated state rate. Seattle's minimum wage for large employers reached $20.76/hr in 2026. San Francisco and Berkeley both sit at $18.67/hr. Denver pays $18.81/hr, and Rockville, Maryland reaches $18.00/hr for large employers. None of these figures required an act of Congress — they came from state legislatures, citizen ballot initiatives, or city councils acting entirely independently of the federal minimum wage. It's worth noting the reverse is also happening: roughly two dozen states, including Missouri, Arkansas, and Iowa, have passed preemption laws that block their own cities from setting local rates above the state floor, so the trend toward higher local wages isn't universal even within states that have raised their own minimums.

The Inflation Erosion: What $7.25 Is Actually Worth

Adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, $7.25 in July 2009 is worth approximately $5.30 in 2009 dollars — meaning the real, inflation-adjusted value of the federal minimum wage has fallen by roughly 27% since it was last set. Put another way, a minimum wage worker in 2009 had more purchasing power than a minimum wage worker in 2026, despite earning the same nominal rate.

If the federal minimum wage had been indexed to inflation from 2009, it would be approximately $10.50-$11.00 per hour today. If it had been indexed to productivity growth (as it roughly was from 1938 to 1968), it would be over $22.00 per hour.

That erosion isn't spread evenly. For the roughly 20 states still anchored to $7.25/hr, it compounds year after year with no offset — a full-time worker earning the floor in Alabama, Texas, or Wisconsin has watched their real pay shrink continuously since 2009, while a worker in an indexed state like Washington or Connecticut has had their wage recalibrated for cost-of-living every single year. The absence of federal minimum wage increases doesn't just freeze pay in nominal terms; it guarantees that pay loses ground in real terms for as long as Congress doesn't act.

What Would a Federal Increase Actually Mean?

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has analyzed the effects of previous Raise the Wage Act proposals and found that a federal increase to $15/hr would:

  • Increase wages for approximately 27 million workers (about 17% of the workforce)
  • Lift roughly 1.3 million people out of poverty
  • Potentially reduce employment by 0.5-1.4 million jobs (0.3%-0.9% of employment), though estimates vary widely
  • Increase the federal deficit by approximately $54 billion over 10 years (due to higher prices for goods and services the government purchases)

These estimates are from the CBO's 2021 analysis of a $15/hr proposal and would differ for a $17/hr target or a different phase-in schedule.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which states still pay only the $7.25 federal minimum wage?

Twenty states have not set their own minimum wage above the federal floor: Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Most are concentrated in the South and Midwest, and many of them also have state laws that preempt cities and counties from setting a local rate above the state/federal minimum.

Which state has the highest minimum wage?

Washington has the highest statewide minimum wage at $17.13/hr as of 2026. Within Washington, Seattle's local ordinance pushes the rate even higher — $20.76/hr for large employers (501 or more employees) and $19.06/hr for small employers.

Are federal minimum wage increases likely to happen soon?

Not imminently. No bill has cleared both the House and Senate, and the same 60-vote Senate threshold that has blocked prior attempts still applies. Proposals like the Raise the Wage Act remain introduced and could advance if the composition of Congress shifts, but as of now there's no scheduled floor vote, and reconciliation has already been tested and failed as a workaround once, in 2021.

Does the $7.25 federal minimum wage apply to tipped workers?

Not directly. Federal law sets a separate minimum cash wage of $2.13/hr for tipped employees. Employers can count up to $5.12/hr in tips as a "tip credit" toward the $7.25/hr minimum, but if an employee's tips plus cash wage don't add up to at least $7.25/hr in a given week, the employer is required to make up the difference.

What is the federal exempt salary threshold, and is it the same thing as the minimum wage?

No — it's a related but separate figure. The FLSA's overtime-exemption salary threshold, currently $684/week ($35,568/year), determines whether a salaried employee can be classified as exempt from overtime pay. It's set through Department of Labor rulemaking rather than the same statutory rate as the $7.25/hr hourly minimum wage, but both numbers come from the same underlying law and both have drawn criticism for lagging behind cost-of-living increases.

Why do some states raise their minimum wage automatically while the federal rate doesn't?

Nineteen states have written inflation indexing directly into their minimum wage laws, typically tying annual adjustments to the Consumer Price Index. That means their rates rise every year without a new bill or ballot measure. The FLSA has never included a comparable indexing provision — Congress would have to add one through legislation, and none of the current federal minimum wage increase proposals in Congress do that beyond indexing the rate after it first reaches its target (the Raise the Wage Act, for example, only begins indexing to median wage growth once the $17/hr target is reached in 2028).

Related: Why the Federal Minimum Wage Hasn't Increased Since 2009 · Federal Minimum Wage Timeline · States with the Lowest Minimum Wage