A.B. 1228 enacted a $20 minimum wage and standards-setting council for California’s fast food industry. The law was signed in September 2023 and went into effect starting April 1, 2024. Soon after Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing of the law, restaurants, customers, and employees alike began bracing for its impacts, even before April.

Headlines broke as early as October 2023 following the signing, in which operators warned about how the law would force them to adapt. Many chains reported they would be forced to raise prices, lay off staff, or potentially close down.

While some adjustments began as early as the fall of 2023, the consequences of the $20 minimum wage are still ongoing a year after the $20 minimum wage went into effect. California’s fast food restaurants:

• Lost 16,000 jobs since the law was signed, including over 14,000 lost since it went into effect in April 2024;
• These job losses represented roughly two-thirds of all fast food job losses nationwide during the same period, and significantly outpaced the rate of losses for California’s total private workforce;
• Saw prices increase by as much as 14.5% since the law was signed, doubling the rate of price increases nationwide in fast food restaurants;
• Saw prices rise 56% faster than California sit-down, full-service restaurants, a gap five times larger than the gap between fast food and full-service restaurants nationwide; and
• Have seen customer foot traffic decrease following implementation of the law. Now the state’s Fast Food Council is being pushed by unions to issue another increase to this mandate – as much as 3.5 percent.

Yet Californians and local operators have barely been able to assess the damage from the past year. While Newsom and other advocates refuse to acknowledge the consequences caused by the $20 wage law for fast food operators, workers, and California residents – the economic evidence is piling up.