Employment Effects of California's Fast Food Minimum Wage: Evidence from the QCEW and QWI

Jeffrey Clemens, Olivia Edwards, Jonathan Meer and Joshua D. Nguyen

No 34033, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: California recently raised its minimum wage in the fast-food sector from $16.00 to $20.00 per hour. We present one-year and two-year fixed-horizon estimates of the effects of this policy on California’s limited-service restaurant employment using data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) and the Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI). After one year, our median estimates show that employment declines by 3 percent in the QCEW and 1.5 percent in the QWI relative to the counterfactual. After two years, both data sets show a decline of about 3.5 percent. We discuss evidence from several other recent papers on the employment effects of this policy.

JEL-codes: J08 J20 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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