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Did California's Fast Food Minimum Wage Reduce Employment? Jeffrey Clemens, Olivia Edwards & Jonathan Meer Share X LinkedIn Facebook Bluesky Threads Email Link Working Paper 34033 DOI 10.3386/w34033 Issue Date July 2025 We analyze the effect of California's $20 fast food minimum wage, which was enacted in September 2023 and went into effect in April 2024, on employment in the fast food sector. In unadjusted data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, we find that employment in California's fast food sector declined by 2.7 percent relative to employment in the fast food sector elsewhere in the United States from September 2023 through September 2024. Adjusting for pre-AB 1228 trends increases this differential decline to 3.2 percent, while netting out the equivalent employment changes in non-minimum-wage-intensive industries further increases the decline. Our median estimate translates into a loss of 18,000 jobs in California's fast food sector relative to the counterfactual. * Acknowledgements and Disclosures Clemens thanks the Hoover Institution for its support in his capacity as an adjunct Senior Fellow. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. * Download Citation (*) MARC ( ) RIS ( ) BibTeKh Download Citation Data Related Topics Labor Economics Labor Supply and Demand Labor Compensation Programs Labor Studies Public Economics Working Groups Personnel Economics More from the NBER In addition to working papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates' latest findings through a range of free periodicals -- the NBER Reporter, the NBER Digest, the Bulletin on Health, and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship -- as well as online conference reports, video lectures, and interviews. 2025, 17th Annual Feldstein Lecture, N. 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