Texas: The minimum-wage state

By Patrick Danner
pdanner@express-news.net
Updated 06:59 a.m., Tuesday, March 29, 2011

States with the highest percentage of workers earning at or below minimum wage:

Texas: 9.5 percent, 550,000 workers

Mississippi: 9.5 percent, 63,000

Alabama: 9.3 percent, 106,000

West Virginia: 9.3 percent, 40,000

Louisiana: 8.9 percent, 87,000

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Texas tied with Mississippi for states having the highest percentage of hourly paid workers earning the minimum wage or less in 2010.

Some 550,000 Texans, or 9.5 percent of hourly paid workers, made the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less last year. That's up 76,000 workers, or 16 percent, from 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Monday.

Leslie Helmcamp, a policy analyst with the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, which focuses on low- and moderate-income Texans, called the numbers “alarming.â€