We find that increases in the minimum wage significantly reduced the employment of low-skilled workers. By the second year following the $7.25 minimum wage’s implementation, we estimate that targeted individuals’ employment rates had fallen by 6.6 percentage points (9%) more in bound states than in unbound states. The implied elasticity of our target group’s employment with respect to the minimum wage is −1, which is large within the context of the existing literature.

In 2022, California’s minimum wage will rise to $15 per hour (by 2023 for businesses with fewer than 25 employees), including restaurant workers. As one California food wholesaler, who services a number of restaurants, told me, “Get ready for the $25 lunch burger at your favorite decent, non–fast food restaurant.” 

With Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts crossing over to join the liberals, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 today in Air & Liquid Systems v. DeVries that federal maritime law permits seafarers claiming asbestos-related ailments to sue manufacturers of ship components such as boilers and turbines that contained no asbestos, on the grounds that they knew that the mineral would be used in conjunction with their product later in such forms as insulation or connective gaskets.