This column contains a correction.
The Trump administration claims that its actions are raising pay for the working class when in reality, they are empowering corporations to lower wages for millions of workers by eliminating minimum wage protections for federal contractors, disabled workers, and domestic workers providing home care and child care.
Minimum wage standards are a fundamental U.S. labor protection. Minimum hourly pay and overtime standards prevent employers from paying workers the lowest they can get away with. But the administration is using its executive authority to:
• End minimum wage and overtime protections for upward of 3.7 million domestic workers
• Reduce the minimum wage for federal contractors by $9,256 annually
• Reverse a policy that would have prevented over 600 employers from legally paying disabled workers less than the minimum wage
While some cities and states have enacted protections that go beyond federal minimum pay standards, the administration’s actions will effectively leave millions of workers unprotected by the federal minimum wage standard. These workers are already making low wages as it is: Home health aides earn only $34,900 per year,* and disabled workers covered under the subminimum rule earn just more than $4 per hour in some states.
This article details how the Trump administration is attacking minimum wages and making things worse for these workers.
Excluding domestic workers from minimum wage and overtime protection
The Trump administration has proposed a rule that would get rid of minimum wage protections for upward of 3.7 million domestic workers that work in peoples’ homes to provide care and assistance for children and to allow aging Americans and disabled people to live independently in their local communities.
Home care workers already struggle with low wages: In 2024, the median wage for a home health aide was only $34,900 per year. By exempting these employees from the federal minimum wage law, employers will be free to cut wages for millions of domestic workers to less than $7.25 per hour and avoid paying them time-and-a-half pay on hours worked beyond a 40-hour workweek.
More than a decade ago, the Obama administration closed a long-standing loophole in the Fair Labor Standards Act rules to ensure that more domestic workers had access to minimum wage and overtime protections. These workers were excluded from the federal minimum wage law passed in 1938 in order to win support from southern Democrats, who opposed extending the protections to an occupation that was a major source of employment for Black workers. Now, the Trump administration is opening that loophole again.
The Trump administration will take the next step in rolling back these protections just after Labor Day, when the period for public comments on the proposal closes. However, it has already ordered regional enforcement offices to ignore the existing standard and stop enforcing the federal minimum wage law for domestic workers who gained minimum wage rights under the 2013 rule. The administration claims that the 2013 rule—which has been factored into the cost of domestic services for more than a decade—might discourage use of home care services, but in reality, similar minimum wage policies have had little to no impact on employment.
Cutting a minimum wage that gave more than 300,000 federal contractors a raise
The federal government contracts work out to private sector companies to provide goods and services for the public, the military, and the government—from building and maintaining federal offices to providing uniforms for military service members. For almost a century, the government has used wage standards to ensure that government spending does not undermine market wages and benefits, and to maintain a skilled and well-qualified contract workforce.
Despite these protections, federal contract workers have too often been paid poverty wages and received few benefits. In 2021, the Biden administration raised the minimum wage for workers on these contracts to $15 per hour, adjusted annually to account for inflation. The boost for workers was substantial: 327,300 workers earned a raise. Because wage increases have kept pace with inflation, a private sector worker on a government contract was earning at least $17.75 per hour before Trump’s executive order, more than twice the current federal minimum wage.
In March, the Trump administration revoked the Biden administration’s order, reducing the allowable minimum wage on federal contracts to $13.30 per hour and lowering the minimum wage by $9,256 annually for a full-time worker. This move disproportionately affected contract workers without a college degree. Revoking the order also creates confusion for contractors trying to determine which wage applies to new and existing contracts and what wages they need to pay because the Department of Labor still has not issued guidance on the new wage standard.
Giving employers permission to pay disabled workers less than the minimum wage
Disabled workers have a harder time finding jobs and get paid less than workers without disabilities, but the Trump administration is reversing a policy that would have prevented corporations from legally paying disabled workers less than the minimum wage.
As originally enacted, the federal minimum wage law allowed employers to apply for a certificate, called a Section 14(c) waiver, to pay disabled workers less than the minimum wage. Researchers estimate that there are currently around 38,000 people earning subminimum wages under these waivers, which are held by more than 600 employers. In some of the states that still allow 14(c) waivers, workers earned an average of just more than $4 per hour.
Advocates have worked for decades to end the use of subminimum wages for disabled workers: 16 states currently ban using subminimum wage waivers, usage of 14(c) waivers was declining, and the Biden administration introduced a draft rule that—if finalized—would have ended their use nationally and given tens of thousands of disabled workers a raise.
As part of its agenda to “unleash prosperity through deregulation,” the Trump administration withdrew the proposed rule in July, continuing to allow employers to apply for waivers to pay disabled workers less than the minimum wage. While the administration claimed the waivers are necessary for preventing unemployment among disabled workers, states that ended the use of 14(c) waivers have seen no decrease in labor force participation among workers with intellectual disabilities, who make up 90 percent of the 14(c) workforce.
Conclusion
Even though it claims to “put American workers first,” workers across the country are under fire from the Trump administration, and its latest moves will strip away minimum wage protections for millions of private sector workers. Basic minimum wage protections are necessary to prevent workers from being paid bare-minimum poverty wages by their employers. Gutting the minimum wage will enable corporations to cut wages, only making it harder for the working class to get by.
* Correction, September 8, 2025: This column has been corrected to state that home health aides earn $34,900 per year.
Aurelia Glass is Policy Analyst, Inclusive Economy.
