In 2014, 1.7% of workers were paid the minimum, and the 10th percentile hourly wage was $8.62, which you could reasonably say was barely more than the minimum.

In 2014, 1.7% of workers were paid the minimum, and the 10th percentile hourly wage was $8.62, which you could reasonably say was barely more than the minimum. So there were a lot of people making minimum wage or fairly close to it: https://www.epi.org/publication/stagnant-wages-in-2014/ https://www.epi.org/publication/stagnant-wages-in-2014/ However, 10th percentile wages are now $14/hour, which is almost double the minimum: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf and the number of people making exactly minimum wage has shrunk dramatically, from ~1.7% to ~0.1%. So it seems reasonable to say that the number of people making close to minimum wage is now quite small.