In most of the U.S., it remains legal to pay disabled workers less that the federal minimum wage.
A 1938 law means more than 400,000 Americans now earn a subminimum wage.
Those working at sheltered workshops—generally run by nonprofits and employing people with disabilities separately from others—make an average of $3.34 an hour.
President Joe Biden’s proposal to eliminate subminimum wages as part of his $1.9-trillion stimulus bill—which would also have raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025—did not survive the Senate process.
