How many people earn the minimum wage?

The short answer is: Not many. But in a way, that's also the wrong question.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.57 million Americans, or 2.1 percent of the hourly workforce, earned the minimum wage in 2012. More than 60 percent of them either worked in retail or in leisure and hospitality, which is to say hotels and restaurants, including fast-food chains.

If you want to honestly debate the merits of raising the minimum wage, however, you need to think beyond who earns it today. After all, there are millions of workers making $8 or $9 an hour assembling burgers or changing sheets who might be affected by a hike. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that if Washington increased the minimum to $10.10 as Obama would like, some 21.3 million employees would eventually be guaranteed a raise, assuming they kept their jobs. (Another 11.1 million might theoretically benefit if companies adjusted their whole wage scales upwards, which is what the light blue section on the chart shows. But that might just be wishful thinking on EPI's part.)*

In the end, we're talking about a policy that would give somewhere around 11 percent of workers a raise.

I thought minimum-wage earners were mostly just suburban teenagers. Is that true?

The Heritage Foundation would certainly like you to think so. Conservative groups often argue that, contrary to the image projected by of liberals, most of the minimum wage workforce isn't really made up of desperate parents struggling to make ends meet. Instead, they say, it consists of middle-class teens and married women who live above the poverty line but might, for instance, want to work part-time while raising young children.

They're not all wrong. Almost a third of minimum-wage workers are teenagers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, Heritage finds, 62 percent of those under 25 are enrolled in school. They're not necessarily planning to make a career folding snack wraps.

But keep in mind: The vast majority of these workers aren't teenagers. And among minimum wagers older than 25, Heritage notes that the average household income is $42,000 a year. Is that poverty? Not unless you're a single parent with eight children. But is it rich? Of course not. In fact, it's still well below the median household income of $51,000.

We'll get more into who exactly would reap the rewards of a minimum wage increase later in the FAQ. But here's what you should remember for now: The beneficiaries wouldn't all be impoverished adults, but they wouldn't all be 17-year-olds saving up for the next "Call of Duty" sequel, either.

Do people really get stuck in minimum-wage jobs their whole lives? I'm skeptical.

This is another issue minimum wage critics sometimes bring up. Practically nobody spends their whole life flipping burgers or folding sweaters, they say, and we shouldn't make it expensive for companies to hire entry-level workers.