With all the focus on President Donald Trump’s trade wars, you may have missed that on March 14, 2025, Trump issued an executive order eliminating a Biden-era regulation that raised the minimum wage for private sector workers on federal contracts to $17.75 per hour. The Biden administration’s rule raised the wages of 327,300 workers, resulting in an average wage increase of $5,228 per year. Analysis from the Center for American Progress reveals that some workers on federal contracts can now be paid a minimum of only $13.30 per hour—a pay cut of up to 25 percent.
Unfortunately, the minimum wage order is just one of many of the Biden administration’s pro-worker executive actions Trump has repealed. In fact, the president’s escalating attacks on federal workers and their unions will harm the nearly 3 million federal public servants working in all 435 congressional districts.
At the outset of the second Trump administration, the American Worker Project published an article outlining six clear ways to measure whether Trump would live up to his promises to be pro-worker. While it’s too soon to offer a final verdict only 100 days into the administration, it is already failing on several of these measures.
From the Center for American Progress, April 16, 2025: