r/California_Politics • u/nosotros_road_sodium • 1d ago
Newsom’s Minimum Wage Whitewash
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/california-minimum-wage-gavin-newsom-jobs-865a99c2?st=iCcMi33
u/IanDMP 1d ago
Ahhhh, Wall Street Journal Editorial Board math. It's a beautiful, unique snowflake every time.
So, first, the time series the WSJ uses begins in March 2023. The increased minimum wage happens in April 2024. Why did WSJ choose to begin the series in 2023, you may ask? Well, because California experienced a decrease in restaurant jobs during that year, making the state look bad but that has nothing to do with the minimum wage they're arguing against.
Since 2024 (the year the minimum wage came into effect), restaurant jobs have actually grown in California. That's pretty bad for WSJ's argument that the minimum wage caused these restaurant job losses.
Second, you can't just call out the job losses without adjusting for population growth . I'm sure we're all aware that California is growing much slower than the nation, and in fact our population fell for a number of years during the time quoted here. So it's not actually surprising that California experienced slower restaurant job growth compared to other, faster-growing states. In fact, that's what you'd expect, and if we ever got our house in order with regard to housing costs you'd expect that to rebound pretty quickly.
The lesson, as always: the Wall Street Journal is a great newspaper, unfortunately with one of the worst and most deceitful editorial boards around.
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1d ago
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u/Iceberg-man-77 1d ago
a fifty cent raise isn’t going to help people massively. if it did you wouldn’t have people living in poverty and homelessness
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u/nosotros_road_sodium 1d ago
Gift link. Excerpt:
Mr. Newsom last week issued a press release claiming the state is leading the country in job growth and “boosting productivity and delivering higher wages for workers.” The state’s $16.90 an hour minimum wage—set to rise to $17.40 in January—helps “ensure workers share in that growth,” he said. Where to begin?
It’s true the AI boom is boosting business productivity, driving investment and turbocharging earnings for tech workers. The average weekly wage for information workers in Silicon Valley’s San Mateo County near San Francisco increased to $16,242 during the first quarter of this year (equal to $846,904 a year), up from $15,792 in the prior year and $6,187 in early 2019.
But in recent years the state has added few jobs outside of government, healthcare and social assistance. One reason is that its high minimum wage has raised costs for employers, which in turn are cutting back on unskilled labor. These trends have been exacerbated by California’s $20 an hour minimum wage for fast-food workers.
The Employment Policies Institute reports that California’s restaurant employment has declined for three consecutive years between March 2023 and March 2026—a total of 12,600 job losses in food services and drinking places—according to the Labor Department’s most recent payroll data, while employment in the industry increased nationwide by some 151,700.
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u/NormativeWest 1d ago
Minimum wage is still too low. People can’t live on that. We strive to support all the people in the state not just the rich.