Iowa's Not-So-Colorful Minimum Wage History

Doug McReynolds

March 27, 2026

On January 25, 2007, Iowa’s Democratic Governor Chet Culver signed House File 1 into law, raising the minimum hourly wage paid to Iowa’s workers from $5.15 to $6.20 on April first of that year and to $7.25 on January 1, 2008.  Figuring a 40-hour work week and a 50-week work year, this comes to an annual gross income of $14,500 for Iowa’s lowest paid workers.  It was a significant step, and it put Iowa ahead of a plodding federal government, which didn’t get around to a similar pay boost until the middle of 2009.  Yet the $4,200 raise wasn’t enough.  For one thing, on the day Governor Culver signed the bill, a gallon of gasoline cost $1.68 in Iowa; by the time the full raise took effect a year later, the cost was $2.55. 

In 2008, when the pay increase took effect, the MIT Living Wage Calculator estimated the living wage for a single parent with one dependent child living in Waterloo, Iowa to be $24.00 per hour, or some $48,000 annually.  Median household income in Waterloo was $42,700 at the time, a full $7,300 under the living wage benchmark, and “average wage per job” was still less, $37,023.  Modest although they may be, these numbers are, of course, well above $14,500.

During the 2010’s, several of Iowa’s more local governments took it into their own hands to diminish the gap between minimum and living wages.  Johnson County, for example, raised its minimum wage to $8.20 in 2015, $9.15 in 2016, and $10.10 in 2017.  Linn County quickly followed suit.  Black Hawk County’s supervisors authorized a task force on January 31, 2017, to tackle the issue.  Alas, a different governor (Republican T*rr* Br*nst*d) and a different legislature (Republican) quickly ratified House File 295 to quash the whole movement, proscribing any local government entity from even trying to raise its minimum wage above the state-established dregs.  (Aside:  WHO VOTED FOR THESE CLOWNS!?)  And, nine years later, here we are.

By 2026, with the minimum wage still stuck at $7.25, the living income estimate for a single parent with one dependent child in Waterloo has risen to $68,000 and the actual median family income to $57,000—now an $11,000 difference.

Meanwhile, that gallon of gasoline that cost $1.68 when Governor Culver signed HF-1 in 2007 has a price tag of $3.31 today.  Median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Waterloo has gone from $620 per month in 2008 to $910 today ($1,019 next door in Cedar Falls); a dozen eggs from $1.99 to $4.75; a pound of hamburger from $3.04 to $7.85; individual health insurance from $317 per month to $700.  (These statistics are not hard to find, by the way; anyone can do it.)  And the minimum wage is $7.25.

To many people, this looks like a pressing but relatively straightforward problem to be solved.  And Iowa has a legislature hired expressly to address the state’s more pressing problems.  So, what are the governor, the House, and the Senate focusing their collective attention on these days?  Bathrooms again.  And vote suppression.  I’m not sure where the bill on the regulation of noodling (HF-832) is just now.

It is time for some new faces in Des Moines.