After California's $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers went into effect in April, some economists expected affected restaurants to cut jobs. So what actually happened? They not only added workers but did so at a faster pace than fast-food restaurants in the nation as a whole—or at least that was the claim of a research paper by two labor economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Davis.
If you actually read it, you'll find that the results celebrated in the press release and echoed by the media aren't in the paper. In fact, it barely addresses the effect of the minimum wage increase on fast-food employment in California. It offers no numbers and no models. There's no evidence that fast-food jobs increased after the law was implemented.
