The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour for most workers. CBO has examined how increasing the federal minimum wage to $10, $12, or $15 per hour by 2025 would affect employment and family income. Increasing the minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. For most of them, earnings and family income would increase, which would lift some families out of poverty. But other low-wage workers would become jobless, and their family income would fall—in some cases, below the poverty threshold.
