Minimum Wage: 7 Facts About Utah's Minimum Wage

While efforts to raise minimum wage around the country have succeeded elsewhere, no such movement has gained traction in Utah to raise it above the federal standard of $7.25 per hour, but it remains a talked about topic in political circles.

Here are seven facts about Utah's minimum wage that have been part of the conversation.

1. According to Utah's Labor Commission, Utah's minimum wage is currently $7.25, but employers can pay minors $4.25 an hour during their first 90 days of employment. Tipped employees can be paid $2.13 an hour as long as the tips earn them up to the minimum wage.

2. Utah's minimum wage for tipped workers also equals the federal minimum for those employees. That puts the state in the same category as 10 other states, along with workers in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, noted the U.S. Department of Labor. States with the same state minimum for tipped workers include Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia, and Wyoming.

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3. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Utah state law authorizes the adoption of the federal minimum wage rate via administrative action, meaning that the state minimum wage will always equal the federal minimum wage.

4. Utah is one of 14 states where the state minimum wage equals the federal minimum wage. This list is slightly different from the tipped workers list. Thes other states are Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

5. In May 2015, the mayor of Utah's largest city, Salt Lake City, Ralph Becker, proposed raising the minimum wage for 150 city employees to $10.10 per hour, costing the city roughly $80,000, according to the KTVX-TV.

6. According to Governing.com, 4.7 percent of Utah's hourly employees currently work at or below the minimum wage, translated to roughly 36,000 workers. The website states that there are 773,000 hourly workers in the state.

7. According to the National Women's Law Center, about half of the minimum wage workers in Utah are women. The U.S. Census Bureau, by most recent estimates, calculated that women made up slightly less than half of Utah's population.

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