California’s Minimum Wage Hikes are Going to Cost People 400k Jobs by 2022 Says Study

Employment Policies Institute (EPI) released a study that has some seriously bad news for the #RaisetheWage folks, but more importantly, it’s bad news for all Californians.

Seems people’s quest to hike the minimum wage to $15 will cost a lot of people their jobs.

According to the study, as reported by DailyWire, by the time 2022 hits and the $15 an hour wage hike is fully implemented, Californians will have lost over 400,000 jobs.

The study found that for every 10 percent wage hike, the state suffers a five percent job loss:

… beginning in 2001, California began a practice of increasing its minimum wage at a faster rate than mandated by federal law. In 2001, the California minimum exceeded the federal minimum by $1.10 ($6.25 versus $5.15). The gap between the California and federal minimum fluctuated since 2000 as both the state and federal minimum wages increased. As of 2017, California’s $10.50 minimum is among the highest statewide minimum in the country. Moreover, under current law, California’s will increase its minimum wage to $15.00 by 2022 while the federal minimum is scheduled to remain at $7.25. If current laws remain in effect, this will lead to the largest gap between a state and federal minimum wage in the history of the U.S.

Even more frightening is the fact that these researchers say that this is actually a conservative estimate, seeing as how they didn’t have access to some county’s full economic data.

Overall, the study backs up what many already knew. Forcing businesses to pay people more causes them to hire less.

“A 2015 Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco review of economic research found minimum wage increases have been more harmful to low wage employment than previously thought. Earlier this year, researchers at Harvard Business School and Mathematica Policy Research looked at San Francisco’s $15 minimum wage and found restaurant closures associated with the increase in labor costs,” writes the EPI.

The punchline here is that if you live in California and work in the food or retail industries, you should probably stay on your toes. Those wage hike protesters are probably going to cost you your job.

Still want to vote for Bernie?

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