President Obama recently issued an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 per hour. But how the rise actually work, and who'll be affected by the move?

In the following video, Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool's director of investment planning, goes through the details of the minimum-wage increase. Dan notes that the move will take effect for new contracts in 2015, leaving time for contractors to anticipate the changes. He also points out that the move won't necessarily affect a huge percentage of federal contract workers, as major contractors Boeing (BA 0.25%), Lockheed Martin (LMT -0.55%), and Northrop Grumman (NOC -1.20%) have large numbers of highly paid workers that do federal contract work. Still, Dan concludes that the wage increase will be an interesting experiment on a much-debated economic issue affecting labor relations.