Zohran Mamdani campaigned on a promise to raise the Big Apple’s minimum wage to $30 an hour. Now that he’s the mayor, a $30 proposal is currently before the City Council. Over a decade ago, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo pushed a $15 minimum wage in the city – and the law slashed thousands of local restaurant workers’ jobs.
In 2015, Governor Cuomo used a state “wage board” to recommend new minimum wage laws – mandating a $15 minimum wage in NYC by 2018, roughly doubling the existing minimum wage rate set by the state at the time. Following these annual wage hikes through 2018, the Big Apple’s restaurant industry job growth ground to a halt, and even resulted in lost jobs right before the pandemic.
According to monthly jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, NYC was averaging roughly 7% year-over-year growth from 2010 to 2013. Beginning in 2014, the state began increasing the minimum wage beyond the federal rate, from $7.25 an hour up to $9 an hour through 2015.
Then, the higher NYC-specific wage rates began, and average job growth rates plummeted. Restaurant jobs stagnated compared to the prior year, averaging less than a percentage point growth in 2018 and 2019 – with some months showing job losses compared to prior years.
Under the implementation of a $15 minimum wage in New York City, headlines highlighted restaurants’ struggles.
- “New York’s Vanishing Diners,” The New York Times, May 2019
- “$15 Minimum Wage Sparks A Jobs Recession In New York,” Investor’s Business Daily, February 2019
- “NYC restaurants cutting staff hours as minimum wage hits $15,” CBS News, January 2019
- “The Coffee Shop to close after 28 years due to higher rent, higher minimum wage”, New York Business Journal, July 2018
NYC is still not out of the woods. Just as the economy recovered from the pandemic, state lawmakers passed another law to raise the city’s minimum wage up to $17 an hour by 2026, and data shows negative impacts on restaurant jobs. In March 2026, NYC restaurants had slashed 3.7% jobs in the last year – roughly 9,800 full- and limited-service restaurant jobs.
Now wage hike activists want Mayor Zohran Mamdani to deliver on his campaign promise – a $30 hourly wage in NYC, which represents more than a 75% increase in just a few years.
But city lawmakers should be wary of New York City’s past track record with wage hikes before moving full-steam ahead.