Once upon a time (aka a couple of years ago), many others and I predicted California's rush to jack various minimum wages would invoke the law of unintended (dire) consequences, which would also be completely ignored as lessons go.
The 'Clueless, Pandering Democrats Bone Working Stiffs and Business Owners Yet Again' Maxim
This particular 2023 post dealt with two specific laws taking effect in April 2024 that boosted the pay of company/franchise-owned fast-food workers to $20 hr ($4 above the state minimum wage of $16 for everyone else), and healthcare workers were boosted into the $18-23 hr range depending on the job description thanks to some heavy union lobbying and creative job category reclassifications.
For businesses like Pizza Hut, that meant their delivery drivers now fell into the $20/hr employee bracket, too. For many of those drivers, this law meant they were the first to receive pink slips, and almost immediately, as businesses scrambled to find savings ahead of the law coming into effect.
...Right now it’s about 1200 jobs gone at these franchises.
…“Well, I knew that was coming. All these big corporations they have to make money,” said Scot Ward, owner of Stone Pizza in Roseville.
…”What these businesses are going to do is cut out employees to make up for the money they are losing,” said Ward.
One year later, as the California Globe reported, the National Bureau of Economic Research issued its findings on the first full year of the minimum wage law AB 1228's impact on CA workers' new and improved quality of life. It seems the law had had very much the opposite effect, from outright job losses to decreased hours for those lucky enough to retain their employment.
Thank you to the virtue-signaling economic ignoramuses in Sacramento once again.
New Economic Study Finds California’s $20 Fast Food Minimum Wage Caused 18,000 Job Losses
“New data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics was released Thursday, revealing a staggering 36,565 fast food jobs have been lost since September 2023 when the $20 per hour minimum wage law, AB 1228, was signed into law,” the Globe reported in June.
There is yet another new study out, this one is by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge Massachusetts:
In unadjusted data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, we find that employment in California’s fast food sector declined by 2.7 percent relative to employment in the fast food sector elsewhere in the United States from September 2023 through September 2024. Adjusting for pre- AB 1228 trends increases this differential decline to 3.2 percent, while netting out the equivalent employment changes in non-minimum-wage-intensive industries further increases the decline. Our median estimate translates into a loss of 18,000 jobs in California’s fast food sector relative to the counterfactual.
“AB 1228 increased wages substantially in California’s fast food sector,” the new economic study by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds. But the study finds something else as well:
California’s non-minimum-wage-intensive employment was on a slower growth trend than the rest of the United States prior to the implementation of its fast food minimum wage. Once again, the estimates using non-changing states as a comparison is larger in absolute value, with a simple triple-difference estimate of -2.6 percent and a detrended triple-difference estimate of -3.9 percent.
The legislation also caused tremendous difficulties for the smaller businesses not covered by the law to attract workers. As my girlfriend Katy at the Globe said...
Every food service employee now wants $20 per hour.
Well, yeah. And your local mom-and-pop burger or taco joint can't pay that.
At the time The Globe was reporting on the $20 hr for burger flippers, the communist running Los Angeles and her toadies on the city council were seriously considering a hike for area hotel staff to a princely $30 hr. As you can imagine, this was also a union-backed deal, and LA is nothing if not a union-owned town, lock, stock, and bent over the barrel.
...The Employment Policies Institute released data in May showing AB 1228, California’s $20 wage law for fast food workers, cost non-tipped restaurant workers 250 hours of work annually, equating to up to 7 weeks of lost work – up to $4,000 in lost potential income, the Globe reported.
As the Globe warned, thousands of fast food employees lost jobs, employees’ hours were cut, and business owners had to do more with less.
The data comes just over one year after AB 1228’s implementation, and as Los Angeles considers a drastic union-backed $30 wage hike for hotel and tourism workers that would follow the fast food wage law’s precedent of economic destruction, EPI reports.
The LA City Council went ahead with the hefty '$30 hr to all hotel (and airport) workers by the '28 Olympics' handout. A 56% pay raise over three years.
Living wage, baby.
The pay raise went into effect after the county registrar found that a petition to take the wage hike to a citywide vote, rather than leaving it in the council's hands, did not have enough signatures to challenge it.
The Los Angeles County Registrar determined that a petition for a referendum on the city’s $30 minimum “Olympic Wage” for Los Angeles hospitality workers by the 2028 Olympic Games had insufficient signatures, according to a city filing. The L.A. Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress, a coalition of tourism industry players including hotel associations, filed the petition in June with enough signatures to temporarily suspend the Olympic Wage’s enforcement; however the signatures have been deemed insufficient and the ordinance is now in effect. ...
Convenient, huh?
Classic.
We are now a year removed from that vote, and two years from the probable pending disaster known as the LA Olympics, and how are hotel workers faring?
The industry seems to be following the maxim...again. Complicated by the inarguable fact that doing business in LA, well, sucks right now.
...According to AHLA, the city’s minimum wage mandate and other policies led to increased "costs without flexibility to reflect market conditions and demand levels."
A phased-in minimum wage hike in Los Angeles mandated up to $30 per hour for airport and hotel workers. The law was signed into law last year by Mayor Karen Bass, mandating that their hourly wage must be raised by $2.50 each year until they reach $30 in 2028.
...The report claimed that the policies led to reduced hiring and cuts in labor hours. Other issues that arose included delayed or canceled hotel investment and development, reduced airline operations and restaurant closures.
"The report finds that hotels across Los Angeles are facing increasing financial and operational pressure as rising labor and operating costs outpace revenue growth, noting that development is slowing, investment is shifting to other markets, and some hotels have closed or delayed expansion plans," the report stated.
The report found that none of the members believe Los Angeles is a favorable environment to make investments and 80% said that the city is not a good place for long-term hotel investment. Almost all the members surveyed said that rolling back the regulations would make the city’s market more attractive.
...This isn't the first time the AHLA has released a report showing adverse effects of the minimum wage mandate after Bass signed it into law. The AHLA previously commissioned another study that found hotels have eliminated or expect to eliminate 6% of positions, roughly 650 jobs, since the Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance took effect in September.
This fellow nails it, as do his commenters, one of whom says, 'But EMTS make $18 hr! MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!'
Another commenter notes it made sense in Venezuela or Cuba, where the doctor made what the fieldhand made. That's also right up Communista Bass's alley.
The advice to LA EMT's was 'learn to clean toilets.'
But I don't want to dwell on overpaid chambermaids and leave the fast food industry out of this check-up session, because we have another year of 'how y'all doin'?' to measure success or failure by and...oh, dear.
One of the largest Carl's Jr. franchisees is filing for bankruptcy. Now, Carl's Jr is a California fast food institution - Carl Karcher actually started it in Anaheim - and the parent company was like a rabbit out of the box, declaring this 'individual's' problems had nothing to do with the firm's nationwide robust good health,
...As Delish reports, Friendly Franchisees Corporation, the operator of sixty-five Carl’s Jr. locations, recently filed for Chapter 11 protection, putting all those restaurants at serious risk of closing. The filing follows a pattern we’ve been seeing across the fast-food industry, where several major franchise operators have succumbed to similar financial strain. Popeyes recently saw its largest franchisee declare bankruptcy and subsequently close 20 locations.
Still, Carl’s Jr. is quick to assure fans of the fast food chain not to expect this setback to affect the brand in the long run. “This situation is specific to this individual franchisee’s financial and business circumstances,” a spokesperson explained to Restaurant Dive. “This has no impact on the operations of any other Carl’s Jr. locations, and we remain committed to delivering quality experiences for our guests, while driving profitable, sustainable growth for our franchisees and brand.”
The locations operated by Friendly Franchisees Corporation are all in California, where it is the company’s largest franchisee. Carl’s Jr. currently has more than 1,000 locations across the United States, including more than 500 in California alone. So while this definitely will affect Carl’s Jr. lovers along the Pacific Coast, the bankruptcy is unlikely to have much impact on customers elsewhere.
So, let's parse the statement. Not only was this one of Carl Jr's largest franchisees, but it was THE LARGEST ONE IN CALIFORNIA.
Hmmm. And the situation is 'specific.'
It takes some digging, but there are a few reports about what specifics the franchise owner cited when filing. One is the struggles the Carl's Jr. brand itself is having nationwide, with declining sales.
...A big Carl’s Jr. franchisee out of California that filed for bankruptcy late last week has blamed its financial problems on two issues: The state’s fast-food wage and the brand’s own problems.
...In a declaration filed Tuesday, Dharod said that the company’s financial distress started two years ago, when California began requiring fast-food chains to pay their workers at least $20 an hour.
The wage “materially increased operating expenses,” he said in the filing.
...California, meanwhile, began requiring fast-food chain restaurants to pay $20 an hour starting in 2024, a dramatic increase in the state’s minimum wage and one targeted at a specific group of restaurants. The result led to a substantial increase in labor cost at one time.
A study earlier this year out of the University of California-Santa Cruz found that this led to higher prices, reductions in working hours and elimination of overtime. And the study found that the wage also put upward pressure on wages at independent restaurants and thinned their profit margins.
Nothing positive has come from this mandated wage hike for low-skilled workers.
Will that stop progressives from pandering to that base?
As I said, it's an ongoing lesson in destructive economics to be ignored, sometimes cynically.
For example, here's Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania this week, lauding his legislature for bumping up that living wage pay for burger flippers and the like, while trying to nudge the PA senate into passing the bill.
I’d be willing to bet a lot has changed for you since 2009.
— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) April 10, 2026
Maybe you graduated from college and started your career. Maybe you got married and started a family. Maybe you made it through school and completed an apprenticeship program.
But do you know what hasn’t changed since…
But do you know what hasn’t changed since 2009? Pennsylvania’s minimum wage. We’ve been stuck at $7.25 for more than 16 years.
The Pennsylvania House has stepped up to do their part — it’s time Senate Republicans follow their lead.
FOLLOW THEIR LEAD INTO MANDATING AN ECONOMIC SINKHOLE FOR PA BUSINESSES!
Now, you look at Shapiro and think tenderhearted progressive is doing this out of his empathy for the working stiff who has no motivation in life to better himself, right? I mean, everyone who works the window at McDonald's for 15 years has shown no motivation to do anything Shapiro's Xweet talks about, so he should be paid as if he had.
Ah. But there's an ulterior motive behind the governor's kindness and the legislature's largesse.
You see, if all these people start earning more money, they pay PA more income taxes!
WEEEE!
And don't you know they've already got that figure in the budget?
So, it's because of your compassion for those poor part-time high school kids, or because of your desire to extort businesses and workers for $53,500,000 in new revenue you have secretly listed in your budget submission?
— DFog22 (@DFog22) April 10, 2026
What a waste of 4 years. pic.twitter.com/1CNO3e0w5n
PASS THAT BILL FOR THE LARDING OF THE STATE'S EXCHEQUER!!!
Who cares if half of these maids or fry cooks or baggage handlers get laid off?
Progressives don't care about the incidental damage. What matters is the warm glow of giving and then the cha-ching as you pull some of that back.
The circle of progressive life goes on as they gaily step over the little burnt bodies.
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