The start of 2015 meant rising salaries for minimum-wage workers in 20 states and the District of Columbia. Workers in New York got their raise a day early, when the state increased the minimum wage by 75 cents on the final day of 2014. That’s over 3 million workers in the U.S. who will benefit from a pay raise this year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But how significant are these wage increases when compared with the diverse cost of living across the country?

The federal minimum wage has sat at $7.25 since 2009, when it was raised from $5.15. Since then, many states have taken the task of hiking minimum-wage requirements into their own hands. These wages can vary greatly from state to state—from $5.15 in Georgia and Wyoming, to $9.47 in Washington. Some have matched federal requirements while others have boosted the minimum wage in their state even higher. And a few states refuse to set a minimum at all (employers are required to pay the highest minimum-wage rate applicable for their location, be it federal, state, or municipal). But what’s even more important than the dollar amount of this wage is the amount of buying power the salaries of these workers affords.

[For more of this story, written by Gillian B. White, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...-their-state/384516/]