The 1960 minimum wage was $1.00/hr, a rate set in 1956 that held steady until 1961. Going back further, the federal minimum wage started at just $0.25/hr in 1938. By the end of the 1960s, three decades of increases had brought it to $1.60/hr, a more than six-fold rise.

Federal Minimum Wage From 1938 Through the 1960s

  • 1938: $0.25/hr, established by the original Fair Labor Standards Act.
  • 1939: raised to $0.30/hr.
  • 1945: raised to $0.40/hr.
  • 1950: raised to $0.75/hr, effective January 25, 1950.
  • 1951-1955: $0.75/hr. No change for five years.
  • 1956: raised to $1.00/hr, effective March 1, 1956.
  • 1957-1960: $1.00/hr. No change for four years.
  • 1961: raised to $1.15/hr, effective September 3, 1961.
  • 1963: raised to $1.25/hr, effective September 3, 1963.
  • 1967: raised to $1.40/hr, effective February 1, 1967.
  • 1968: raised to $1.60/hr, effective February 1, 1968.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was the first federal law in US history to establish a minimum wage, alongside overtime pay requirements and restrictions on child labor.

Why Did the FLSA Start at Just $0.25/hr?

The Fair Labor Standards Act, signed in 1938, was the first federal law to establish a minimum wage in the US at all. $0.25/hr was a genuinely new floor at the time, not a low starting point relative to an existing standard. The law also established overtime pay and restricted child labor for the first time nationally, making the minimum wage just one piece of a broader worker-protection law passed during the Great Depression.

What Was the 1960 Minimum Wage?

$1.00 per hour. This rate had been set in March 1956 and remained unchanged through 1960, until the next increase to $1.15/hr took effect in September 1961. The four-year gap between 1956 and 1961 was, at the time, one of the longer stretches without a federal increase.

How the FLSA's Coverage Grew Over These Decades

The original 1938 law covered a much narrower set of industries than today's FLSA. Amendments through the 1950s and 1960s steadily expanded coverage to more employers and employees alongside each rate increase, a pattern that continued into the 1970s and helped establish the broad-based coverage the law provides today.

Why This Era Set the Pattern for Every Later Increase

The gap between the 1956 and 1961 increases, about five and a half years, was itself a preview of the longer freezes that would follow in later decades. Every federal minimum wage increase since 1938 has required a dedicated act of Congress, with no automatic adjustment mechanism, exactly the same structure that produced the 1980s freeze and the current gap since 2009. Understanding this earliest period of the law's history makes clear that long gaps between increases aren't a modern phenomenon; they've been a recurring feature of federal minimum wage law since its earliest years.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the minimum wage in 1950?

$0.75 per hour, effective January 25, 1950, up from $0.40/hr set in 1945.

What was the minimum wage in 1960?

$1.00 per hour, a rate that had been set in 1956 and held through 1960.

When did the minimum wage first reach $1.00/hr?

March 1, 1956, more than 15 years after the Fair Labor Standards Act was first signed in 1938.

What was the minimum wage by the end of the 1960s?

$1.60 per hour, effective February 1, 1968, the rate that held until the first 1970s increase in 1974.

What Came Next: The 1970s

The steady, spaced-out increases of the 1950s and 1960s gave way to a much more active 1970s, which saw five separate increases in a single decade as Congress responded to rising inflation. See our 1970s year-by-year breakdown for what happened next.

See the complete federal minimum wage history from 1938 to 2026, or read our plain-English guide to the FLSA. For official historical data, see the US Department of Labor's minimum wage history chart.