In 2010 and 2011, the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs commissioned eight projects to evaluate the effects of the sector-specific minimum wages in eight sectors. All projects focused on the effects on employment, labour protection and partly on competition. The final reports imply that all studies used different datasets and a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Frequently the available datasets were not sufficient to generate fully reliable results.

It is the goal of the project to provide a comprehensive report of all available datasets, their linkability with each other and their possibilities to extend the databases by surveys. This includes datasets already used in the research of minimum wages as well as a thorough search for datasets not yet used in minimum wage research. Each dataset is evaluated concerning its applicability and the key information of each dataset is presented in master data lists for each dataset.