Earlier this week, Florida’s minimum wage jumped to $14 an hour, the latest step in a law passed by voters that will bring the minimum wage to $15 by 2026. Supporters promised this steady climb would lift up workers and help families keep pace with rising costs. However, just a few years in, the data tells a different story – slower job growth, mounting costs for small businesses, and fewer opportunities for the very workers this policy was meant to help.
Florida’s minimum wage story goes back more than two decades. In 2005, the state enacted its own minimum wage, along with a fixed $3.02 tip credit. From that point on, Florida’s tipped wage climbed gradually each year based on inflation, reaching $8.56 by 2020.
The real turning point came that November, when voters narrowly passed Amendment 2, setting the state on a path to $15 by 2026. The law jumped the wage from $8.65 in January 2021 to $10 in September 2021 and has added $1 each year since, including this week’s increase to $14.
This long trail of wage hikes is now leaving its mark most clearly on Florida’s full-service restaurants.
In the early part of the decade, full-service restaurant jobs were expanding at a steady 3-5% annual pace. As the state’s minimum and tipped wages climbed in 2017 and beyond, employment growth began to falter. Since the new wage hike law went into place in 2020, and after recovery from COVID, employment growth has slowed to a crawl with just 0.5% increase in restaurant jobs last year.
The slowdown in Florida’s restaurant employment suggests the state is heading down the same road as California, DC, and other places where aggressive wage hikes hurt more than they helped.
Across Florida, small businesses describe mounting financial pressures from rising costs, with many longtime establishments closing their doors in recent years. In Fort Myers, a café owner explained that the jump to $14 is forcing difficult adjustments just to keep the business running. Some employers are turning to technology to reduce staff workload, while others admit that “costs will have to be made up” — meaning higher prices for customers. Local researchers from the University of Central Florida warn that the burden is falling heavily on young workers, with unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds now at 10.5% and poised to rise further as entry-level jobs dry up.
The Sunshine State’s minimum wage experiment is far from over, but the early signs are a cause for concern. Employment growth in one of the state’s largest industries has nearly flatlined. Small businesses are sounding the alarm. Young workers are being shut out of opportunities.
Raising wages on paper does not guarantee prosperity in practice. As the climb to $15 continues, Florida should take a hard look at whether this path is creating the outcomes they thought they would.