Did you ever wonder how the Arizona minimum wage compares to that in other states? If state rates were graded on a curve, the Arizona minimum wage would receive a score of 72%. That’s not bad, considering the competition.
The Arizona minimum wage is $6.75 per hour. Maine also has the same minimum wage. Of the 29 U.S. states with minimum wages higher than the current federal rate of $5.15 per hour, 13 have rates lower than Arizona’s.
Arizona is in the Southwest region, where minimum wage rates are all over the map. Within the region, New Mexico and Utah have minimum wages of just $5.15 per hour, the same as the federal rate. On the other hand, California has one of the highest minimum wages in the nation. The California rate was recently increased to $7.50 per hour, and it’s scheduled to go to $8.00 per hour in January 2008.
That makes the California rate one of the highest in the nation. In January 2008, the minimum wage in California and Massachusetts will increase to $8.00 per hour, under existing legislation. By my admittedly unscientific count, at least 7 states have made that claim, including Massachusetts, New York, California, Vermont, Connecticut, Oregon and Washington State. As of today, the highest state minimum wage is in Washington State, where all workers are paid at least $7.93 per hour.
At the opposite extreme, some states don’t have a minimum wage at all. Currently there are just 5 U.S. states that have no minimum wage. In Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina and Mississippi, you can legally pay someone as little as $1 per hour – or even less.
Many workers in those states are covered by the federal minimum wage, which is currently $5.15 per hour. Only companies that buy and sell all their products locally, and have revenue of less than $500,000 per year, are subject to the lower state minimum wage.
