How Many Jobs in Your County Pay Less Than $13 per Hour?

We regularly receive questions about how many jobs pay less than a certain hourly wage. This question often comes up in relation to the minimum wage or a self-sufficiency wage. Having data by county is particularly useful when looking at how many local jobs might be impacted by changes in the minimum wage (see for example Minimum-Wage Jobs a Smaller Share of Total in Metro Areas) or how many local jobs are at the self-sufficiency level for given type of household.

There were about 577,000 jobs that paid less than $13 per hour in the first quarter 2014. That was about 32 percent of all jobs. We picked $13 per hour for this blog post because we were asked about it recently, but we can look at other wage levels too. This interactive graph lets you see the share and number of jobs in $1 increments from the minimum wage or less ($9.10 per hour in first quarter 2014) to $20 per hour or more. Select any county to explore local wage distributions by the share of all jobs and by the number of jobs.