The paper examines the concept of minimum wage and approaches to its establishment in the labor legislation of the USSR and the Russian Federation. The purpose of the work is to identify the features of legal regulation of the minimum wage that affect the current situation with the minimum wage in order to improve it. The findings indicate that the experience of the USSR and the Russian Federation (in the editorial offices of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation until 2007) has positive aspects which we advise to pay attention to. The article also reviews a significant number of legislative initiatives on these issues involving both the size of the minimum wage itself and the methods and frequency of its establishment. We note that despite the approach adopted since 2021 in setting the minimum wage based on the median wage generally correlates with the world practice, while its size requires further research. We also propose to restore the previously valid definition of the minimum wage.