Welcome to the Cato podcast. I'm Ryan Bourne, Cato's R. Evan Sharf Chair for the Public

Understanding of Economics. California has become something of a real-time laboratory for high

targeted minimum wages. In 2024, the state increased the minimum wage from $16 per hour

to $20 per hour for fast food workers at large chains.

Now, that was one of the largest one-time minimum wage increases in US history, and one of the few focused on a single industry.

But what do we actually know about what happened when that policy went into effect?

And what do those results imply for new proposals

for higher minimum wages in other industries in Californian cities, and even a $25 minimum wage

at the federal level? My guest today is economist and minimum wage expert Jeff Clemens. He's a

professor of economics at UC San Diego, the co-author of two recent papers assessing the impact of the California fast food minimum wage on employment and prices.

Jeff, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me.

Let's start off with the fast food minimum wage in California.

We always like to steal man, different policy ideas here at Cato. So what was the

original thinking and justification behind implementing this policy to begin with?

Sure. So as with most minimum wage increases, the primary objective of the policymakers

who advance the idea is to try to prop up wages for individuals whose wages put them at the bottom of the policymakers who advance the idea is to try to prop up wages for individuals whose wages

put them at the bottom of the income distribution. So the goal is to redistribute resources

towards those workers and improve their standard of living. In the California context, in particular

with the experimentation with the fast food-specific minimum wage, there's also a bit of a shift that we've seen a bit of a trend towards with some policymaking, both in New York and in California, kind of away from very broad-based minimum wages and towards additionally contemplating minimum wages that are specific to sectors like the

fast food sector, like to the gig economy. And also in my hometown of San Diego, there's

hospitality sector minimum wage focused on hotels that will be phasing in over the coming

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