Jeffrey Miron
States and cities never seem to tire of hiking their minimum wages, with predictable effects:
On April 1, 2024, California raised its minimum wage from $16 to $20 per hour for fast-food workers employed at chains with more than 60 locations nationwide.… This was one of the largest one-time minimum wage increases in US history, and one of the few focused on a single industry in recent decades.
Our findings reveal that employment in California’s fast-food sector declined by 2.7 percent between September 2023 and September 2024 relative to fast-food employment elsewhere in the United States.… Our median estimate suggests that California lost about 18,000 jobs that could have been retained if AB 1228 had not been passed.
If a society wishes to redistribute income, it should redistribute income via a negative income tax. Interfering with market wages generates counterproductive results.
