Higher California Minimum Wage Cuts Jobs, Claims Columnist

California Governor Gavin Newsom may have hoped the $20 minimum wage hike he signed into law last year for most fast-food workers would bypass the principles of free-market economics.

The law, which took effect in April, has coincided with the loss of more than 6,000 fast-food jobs in the state over a 10-month period — a 1.1% drop in employment. I Photo: California Governor Flickr

If so, he was mistaken, Ingrid Jacques wrote in an opinion piece for USA Today.

The Democratic governor appears to subscribe to the progressive assumption that government intervention in the private economy will lead to positive outcomes. However, evidence suggests otherwise.

The law, which took effect in April, has coincided with the loss of more than 6,000 fast-food jobs in the state over a 10-month period — a 1.1% drop in employment, according to federal labor data.

In contrast, during the same timeframe a year earlier (before the law’s implementation), California's fast-food sector experienced a 3.1% increase in employment, adding more than 17,000 jobs.

Nationwide, fast-food employment grew by approximately 74,000 jobs, or 1.6%, during the same period, according to the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), a nonprofit organization that opposes government-mandated wage hikes.