In their third report on the subject and second update of data, University of California researchers reach the same conclusions that have twice bedeviled the anti-wage hike sector of the restaurant industry:
California’s $20 an hour fast food minimum wage, instituted in 2024, did not reduce employment.
It led to only the most modest of price increases — barely noticeable to a consumer.
It significantly improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of California workers in many of the industry’s largest fast-food chains, with an average wage increase of more than 10%.
Those results have held steady across three years of work by UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. They also align with a previous study on the California law conducted jointly by Harvard University’s Kennedy Center and UC San Francisco, as well as with long-established research showing that minimum wage increases generally don’t affect employment numbers or prices much.