what's the highest minimum wage in the united states
Minimum wage in the United States Beginning in January 2017, Massachusetts and Washington state have the highest minimum wages in the country, at $11.00 per hour.[2] New York City's minimum wage will be $15.00 per hour by the end of 2018.[3] There is a racial difference for support of a higher minimum wage with most black and Hispanic individuals supporting a $15.00 federal minimum wage, and 54% of whites opposing it.[4] In 2015, about 3 percent of White, Asian, and Hispanic or Latino workers earned the federal minimum wage or less. Among Black workers, the percentage was about 4 percent.[5]
Minimum wage in the United States Minimum wage legislation emerged at the end of the nineteenth century from the desire to end sweated labor which had developed in the wake of industrialization.[17] Sweatshops employed large numbers of women and young workers, paying them what were considered nonliving wages that did not allow workers to afford the necessaries of life.[18] Besides substandard wages, sweating was also associated with long work hours and unsanitary work conditions.[19] From the 1890s to the 1920s, during the Progressive Era, a time of social activists and political reform across the United States, progressive reformers, womenâ€™s organizations, religious figures, academics, and politicians all played an important role in getting state minimum wage laws passed throughout the United States.[20]