Skip to content
Connect
Stories

Pennsylvania marks minimum wage anniversary: Workers have been earning $7.25 for 13 years

People in this story

Matt Slocum/AP
Pennsylvania state Rep. Donna Bullock speaks during a rally to raise the state minimum wage at Sharon Baptist Church, Friday, July 9, 2021, in Philadelphia.

WESA/NPR, July 2022

Pennsylvania is one of 20 states that hasn’t raised the 13-year-old federal minimum wage of $7.25. But Pennsylvania is the only such state in the Mid-Atlantic, according to the United States Department of Labor.

A 2021 PA Department of Labor report showed that minimum wage earners only represent 2.6% of all hourly workers in the commonwealth, but 70% of them are 25 years old or younger.

Richard Paulsen is an assistant professor of economics at Bloomsburg University. He is seeing a large portion of the youth population either earning a base wage, or even deciding to not join the workforce at all. One reason young people might not take a minimum wage job? The wage can’t buy as much as it used to.

Continue reading at WESA/NPR.

More Stories

Picture of Dasani water bottles.

Gov. Healey to sign order banning single-use plastic bottles for state agencies

09.21.2023
Co-founder Andrew Song of solar geoengineering startup Make Sunsets holds a weather balloon filled with helium, air and sulfur dioxide at a park in Reno, Nevada, United States on February 12, 2023.

Some Politicians Want to Research Geoengineering as a Climate Solution. Scientists Are Worried

09.18.2023
Plastics and other trash littered a salt marsh in Chelsea in April.

Massachusetts lags on banning plastics

09.25.23
Op-eds