Thanks for the researched answer. On balance, not a boon for anyone other than the employees, and not those if they suffered fewer hours.
I will put in the caveats that your first link covered only the first year - totally fair since that’s all you projected - and leaves me curious whether the situation has improved. And your second link is not an article, but an op-ed from another conservative think tank, the Employment Policies Institute, so unfortunately these days one might expect a scrape of only negative effects.
Nevertheless, California is having many problems with high prices on everything, so the intentions may have been better than their timing. I’d still congratulate them for making the change, but my bias is that I’m from a staunchly union family so I’m always for the workers.
Our updated findings include: an estimated wage increase of 8 to 9 percent for workers covered by the policy; no spillovers to non-covered workers; no negative effects on fast-food employment; and price increases of about 1.5 percent— or about 6 cents on a four-dollar hamburger. The number of fastfood establishments grew faster in California than in the rest of the U.S. I also identify questionable methods in a recent industry report that claims the policy led to substantial negative employment effects and large price increases. That report cherry picks its numbers and does not use modern causal identification methods, casting doubt on its claims.
Ever since the higher wage went into effect last year, the feuding factions have argued over whether the increase has benefited workers without significant negative impacts, as Gov. Gavin Newsom and other advocates have claimed, or has reduced employment and raised prices, as the industry maintains….Proponents have cited multiple studies by academics at Harvard, UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley contending that the wage hike has had minimal, if any, negative effects.
“We find that the policy increased average hourly pay by a remarkable 18 percent, and yet it did not reduce employment,” a study by the UC Berkeley Institute for Research and Labor Employment concluded. “The policy increased prices about 3.7 percent, or about 15 cents on a $4 hamburger (on a one-time basis), contrary to industry claims of larger increases.”…Both pro and con studies used roughly the same employment data generated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency does not collect specific data on the fast food chains affected by the minimum wage legislation, so the rival researchers had to extrapolate what they contend are valid statistical bases.
So, competing studies- those funded by the industry says moderate poor effects, those from neutral non-profits show little significant negative effects. Who to believe, who to believe.
Oh and the Sacramento Bee article? Way way down at the bottom-
Michael Saltsman is executive director and Rebekah Paxton is research director of the Employment Policies Institute. The nonprofit receives some of its support from the hospitality industry.
These numbers aren’t even from CA Globe; they’re just reporting on the same BLS data you and I can look up ourselves (QCEW for NAICS 722513.) Of course, shitting on BLS is Dear Leader’s new hobby.
FWIW those data have since been revised and there’s an additional quarter available. That revision has just a 15k loss Sep to Sep, and the extra quarter shows less than a 14k loss Sep 24 to Dec 24. The rest of the country saw an increase of about 10k for the larger time period.
However, that doesn’t mean the people who otherwise would have been employed at those restaurants are worse off, or that the policy caused it.
If you had read my cites, you would see that “Both pro and con studies used roughly the same employment data generated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency does not collect specific data on the fast food chains affected by the minimum wage legislation, so the rival researchers had to extrapolate what they contend are valid statistical bases.”
So, yes, they use the data and then twist it to show what they want.
She says making $20 an hour might sound nice on paper but at the end of the day, even for workers, it comes with a cost.
“Before the wage increase, they had a certain amount of hours. They’re going to end up with the same check because their hours are severely decreased," she said.
Oh no, do I get the same check because they cut my hours per week from 32 to 24? What a disaster to have 8 extra hours away from the fryer.
And, to keep the Restaurant open and customers happy, the owner still has to staff with so many staff hours.
Not to mention now a second job with 16 hours a week can be worked in.
Mind you- I have no dog in this hunt. I rarely eat at those kinds of places (there is a Taco Bell and a Jack right nearby, so maybe once every couple of months, and I like IN & OUT.
No, the data reported in CA Globe are the raw, unanalyzed BLS QCEW data that Reich and Sosinksiy did not use in their September 2024 working paper, referenced in your cite, because they weren’t available yet. There may be reasons why the data, now that they’re released, don’t tell a useful story, or why they may be overshadowed by other affects, but the only way the BLS data are twisted is if the trumpists have it right and it’s BLS doing the twisting.
It’s a fact, not an interpretation, that BLS QCEW shows fewer limited service restaurant employees in CA both 12 and 15 months after the wage change, while the rest of the country, in aggregate, saw an increase. A conservative shill newspaper copy/pasting the numbers from the dot gov source doesn’t change that.
But like my cite said- that data “The agency does not collect specific data on the fast food chains affected by the minimum wage legislation, so the rival researchers had to extrapolate what they contend are valid statistical bases.””
So they used raw date, that DID NOT include specific data on those fast food chains, and then had to twist the data.
and look again- “Limited service restaurant employees in CA”. That includes ALL Limited Service restaurants, not just the few major fast food chains affected by the rate increase.
Also note that my 2nd cite from CalMatters is dated FEBRUARY 19, 2025, . So again, as CalMatters said= . The agency does not collect specific data on the fast food chains affected by the minimum wage legislation, so the rival researchers had to extrapolate what they contend are valid statistical bases.
Show us how CA Globe twisted the data. You can’t, because all they did was copy/paste it from bls.gov. You called these data “not credible” based on the who reported on them, then repeatedly quoted commentary that isn’t even about these data.
@Projammer did incorrectly call it a “study” but that’s why we read before we dismiss.
They only copied two columns. They left out the column that showed how minor the wage increase was for that category. More importantly, as noted by @DrDeth, the article covers a single NAICS category, one which includes many restaurants that don’t meet the requirements for the mandatory minimum wage increase but also leaves out establishments that do meet the requirements.
“National fast food chain” means a set of limited-service restaurants consisting of more than 60 establishments nationally that share a common brand, or that are characterized by standardized options for decor, marketing, packaging, products, and services, and which are primarily engaged in providing food and beverages for immediate consumption on or off premises where patrons generally order or select items and pay before consuming, with limited or no table service. For purposes of the definitions in this part, “limited-service restaurant” includes, but is not limited to, an establishment with the North American Industry Classification System Code 722513.
If you want to find the data using that definition and perhaps use a bit more than 2 years (let’s go back prior to COVID for best results), especially with the recent inflationary effects of food prices, I’ll happily take a gander at it. I can’t find it, so I’m certainly not willing to make any claim in either direction.
I did do some digging around the BLS site. Even pulling data from places like Mississippi, where they don’t pass them there fancy $20 minimum wage laws, there appears to be no correlation between weekly wages and employment numbers.
I contend that you can’t derive an accurate assessment with the limited data that BLS provides. There are too many external factors that affect discretionary consumption. But if I ran a biased publication, I’m sure I could filter my way to an answer that would sound good.