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No longer last or least

| March 26, 2014 9:00 PM

Idaho is no longer the state with the highest percentage of minimum wage workers.

A significant increase in minimum-wage workers in Tennessee pushed that state into the top spot for 2013, and Idaho is now second in the nation.

The share of Idaho's hourly workers making the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less dropped to 7.1 percent in 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There were 29,000 minimum wage workers in Idaho in 2013, and 31,000 in 2012.

The number of minimum-wage workers in Tennessee increased from 5.5 percent in 2012 to 7.4 percent in 2013.

The recession hit Idaho's goods production industries hard - primarily construction and manufacturing - and the subsequent recovery has been weighted toward service sector jobs, which on average pay about $10,000 a year less.

Two of every three jobs created in Idaho in 2013 were in the service sector.

Nationally, 4.3 percent of all hourly workers made the minimum wage or less in 2013, down from 4.7 percent the year prior.

Twenty states saw the number of minimum wage workers increase in 2013 while Idaho and the rest of the states and the District of Columbia posted decreases in the number of minimum wage workers.