One Fair Wage is back with a new misguided proposal: a $30 minimum wage in various parts of Alameda County, California. The group has qualified two ballot measures, one in the City of Oakland and one for unincorporated Alameda County, that have been approved to go on the ballot in 2028.
The proposals would establish some of the highest local minimum wages in the country, and new EPI analysis estimates that they could cost thousands of jobs across both areas.
Estimated Impacts of a $30 Minimum Wage
To estimate the impacts of the proposed $30 wages, EPI adapted its existing minimum wage employment model using city and county workforce estimates.* View the model methodology here.
The analysis estimates:
- Nearly 8,000 job losses combined in Oakland and Alameda County;
- This includes 6,533 job losses in the City of Oakland under its $30 minimum wage proposal;
- It also includes 1,186 job losses in unincorporated areas of Alameda County under its own $30 minimum wage proposal;
- About 68% of projected job losses in Oakland and 30% in unincorporated Alameda County would occur in the food service industry
Even Alameda County’s own analysis acknowledges the potential costs of the proposal. That report estimates that the proposed $30 wage could result in more than $33 million in additional county expenditures.
A Long History of Minimum Wage Hikes Causing Job Losses
The potential job loss consequences stemming from recent Bay Area minimum wage proposals should not be a surprise. For decades, a large majority of economists have found raising the minimum wage reduces employment.
California is no stranger to these negative impacts. Since implementing its $20 fast-food minimum wage in 2024, economists have found the affected fast food restaurant industry has lost tens of thousands of jobs, in addition to higher menu prices and fewer hours for workers who remained employed.
Nearby San Francisco should also be a cautionary tale. The city has raised the mandated minimum wage annually, hitting $19.61 an hour this year. Restaurants, typically hit hardest by minimum wage hikes, have suffered through three consecutive years of net job losses.
Conclusion
The $30 target being proposed in parts of Alameda County is an unprecedented minimum wage hike. It would nearly double the existing minimum wage requirement in both Oakland and the unincorporated areas of the County. It would also be the highest minimum wage mandate in the country.
Economic history shows each of these proposals could reap serious consequences for workers, including thousands of lost jobs for those being promised higher wages.
*DATA NOTE: To estimate the impact only on unincorporated areas of the county, we adjusted our estimate of the number of affected employees by the share of all Alameda County employees that are not listed in the cities of Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Dublin, Emeryville, Fremont, Hayward, Livermore, Newark, Oakland, Piedmont, Pleasanton, San Leandro, or Union City.
We also adjusted our estimates to ensure they reflected employment in affected establishments, because (1) not all employees living in Alameda County in the CPS dataset will work there, and (2) some workers affected by Alameda County minimum wage changes may live elsewhere. To do this, we re-weighted our estimate of affected workers to reflect the share of employees at unincorporated Alameda County establishments to employees living in unincorporated Alameda County. We also made this adjustment for Oakland city limits.