What is minimum wage?
According to the United States Department of Labor, the federal minimum wage for hourly, nonexempt employees is $7.25 per hour, effective July 24, 2009. Now what this means is that U.S. employees, subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act, must be paid at least $7.25 per hour. However, depending on state law (which work in conjunction with federal laws, as opposed to separate and apart from federal law) an employer may need to also pay an employee additional monies to meet a state and/or specific city’s minimum wage laws as well. For example, in much of California, the minimum wage is $8.00 per hour. In San Francisco, California the minimum wage is $9.36 per hour. So if an employer is subject to federal, state, and local minimum wage laws, a private employer in San Francisco would not have a choice and cannot choose to pay an employee the lower federal or state minimum wage but must pay at least $9.79 per hour to all employees. We know that much of this may seem confusing. If you have qu
