Three-Quarters of PA Minimum-Wage Workers Are Women

Protesting the minimum wage. (Shutterstock.)

Pennsylvania has one of the highest rates of women earning the minimum wage. In fact, nearly three-quarters of minimum-wage workers in the state are women, according to a recent study from the National Women’s Law Center. It joins Louisiana and Arkansas as the only other states with more than seven-in-10 workers earning the state minimum.

In Pennsylvania, the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour and the tipped minimum wage is $2.83. It’s been at that rate since 2009 and there are no major legislative plans to raise it.

Nationally, women “represent about two-thirds of minimum-wage workers across the country, and at least half of minimum-wage workers in every state,” the NWLC said.

The organization went on to say that “in every state, the minimum wage leaves a full-time worker with two children near or below the poverty level.”

In New Jersey, six-in-1o women make the state minimum wage of $8.38 per hour, and in Delaware, two-thirds are women and make $8.25 per hour.

(The NWLC calculations are based on unpublished U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics data.)

In Philadelphia there’s a push to raise the minimum wage to $15, led by groups like 15NowPhilly.