03/28/2024

San Diego’s new minimum wage already may be killing jobs

Evidence has emerged of an economic dark side to San Diego’s decision last year to vault over the state minimum wage — it may have already destroyed thousands of jobs for low-wage workers even as higher pay helps tens of thousands of others.

Consider the restaurant industry, for example, which economists study because it relies on low-wage workers, yet generally faces no foreign or out-of-state competition.

Amid an abrupt slowdown in growth, nearly 4,000 food-service jobs may have been cut or not created throughout San Diego County from the beginning of 2016 through February of this year, according to an analysis of federal payroll data by Lynn Reaser, chief economist of the Fermanian Business & Economic Institute at Point Loma Nazarene University.

View Article