Take out restaurant workers scramble to complete the order. (Photo: James Kirkikis, Shutterstock)
Gov. Newsom’s Office Continues to Fib About Fast Food Job Losses – Claims Job Gains
‘Newsom is stretching the truth to obscure that his fast food minimum wage hike has been a disaster’
By Katy Grimes, August 20, 2024 11:27 am
The Globe received another of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s PR flaks’ gloating emails still claiming that fast food jobs are up in California – even with the $20 per hour wage going into effect April 2024.
In June, the Globe reported that California has lost just under 10,000 fast food jobs since the new $20 minimum wage for fast food employees was first signed into law late last year, according to the California Business and Industrial Alliance (CABIA).
CABIA cited data and a report from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. This article apparently displeased the Governor’s office. We received an email from Brandon Richards (He/Him), Deputy Director of Communications in the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, asking for a retraction or correction and claiming the state has gained jobs since the $20 per hour fast food minimum wage.
Interestingly, their PR tactic is to continue the lie, and skew and manipulate data, even in the face of more and more fast food restaurants closing in California, cutting staff, adding more automation and cutting overtime.
Rather than taking my word for it, or believing your own lying eyes, the Globe spoke with Economist Rebekah Paxton for her analysis of Gov. Newsom’s claims.
Paxton, who holds advanced degrees from Boston University in Economics and Political Science, is the research director at the Employment Policies Institute.
Here is Brandon Richards’ (He/Him) latest fairytale:
I wanted to reach out because you previously wrote about the number of fast food jobs in California, and wanted to be sure you saw that July marked the fourth month the $20/hour min wage law has been in effect and for the fourth straight month California saw job growth – making it 7 straight months of job growth in this sector this year!
In fact, California’s fast food industry is at its highest employment level ever.
- Job growth when looking at it from September 2023 – July 2024
- When Governor Newsom signed the bill to most recent month’s data
- Job growth every month from January 2024 to July 2024
- Every month this year leading up to and including the law being in effect
- Job growth when looking at it from March 2024 to July 2024
- The last month prior to the law going into effect and the first three months of the law in effect.
- Job growth when looking at April 2023 to April 2024
- Year over year, showing no discouragement about new law going into effect (April 2024)
- Job growth when looking at it July 2023 to July 2024
- Year over year, showing California’s industry continues to grow
This all comes despite the early, and false, criticism by a corporate trade group that attempted to push outdated data seemingly for political purposes – and they were rightfully called out.
I have included the BLS data chart below for ease.
Looking forward to your continued coverage, and more accurate portrayal of the current environment than what has been written in the past.
Have a lovely weekend,
Brandon
BRANDON RICHARDS (He/Him)
Deputy Director for Rapid Response
As Rebekah Paxton told us in June: “Newsom is stretching the truth to obscure the obvious: His fast food minimum wage hike has been a disaster. Thousands of workers have lost their jobs, hours are being slashed, and restaurants are closing at an alarming pace. The public isn’t fooled by Newsom’s statistical spin.”
This remains true today.
“He is using the non-adjusted data set,” Paxton said in an interview with the Globe Tuesday. “He went after other groups for using these last time around. But as of July, California is still down 3,000 fast food jobs since January 2024.”
There have been historical fast food job losses because of the increase to the $20 per hour minimum wage. And the governor and his PR staff don’t appear to care that people are losing their jobs – they’d rather gaslight minimum wage workers and claim fast food jobs are up.
“They are cherry picking different time periods here,” Paxton said, “and the administration’s statistics don’t hold up.”
Paxton said the September 2023 to July 2024 time period is a very big time period and arbitrary since September is when the bill was signed, but it wasn’t until January 2024 that we started seeing headlines about fast food companies starting layoffs and job cuts in preparation for the April 2024 effective date of the new minimum wage increase to $20 per hour.
Indeed – the Globe reported December 26, 2023, “Pizza Hut Fires Over 1,200 Drivers In California Before New $20 Minimum Wage Comes Into Effect.”
Even the March 2024 to July 2024 time period, Paxton said is missing about half of the job loss data, since the job cuts started in January 2024, ahead of the April 2024 implementation.
“The BLS statistics show that there have been fast food job losses in 6 of 7 months,” Paxton said. “The net numbers show January through today, 3,000 fast food jobs lost in California.”
| Date | Fast Food Employment | Monthly Change |
| Jan 2024 | 742,228 | – |
| Feb 2024 | 741,618 | -610 |
| Mar 2024 | 739,451 | -2,168 |
| Apr 2024 | 739,055 | -396 |
| May 2024 | 738,071 | -984 |
| Jun 2024 | 736,030 | -2,041 |
| Jul 2024 | 739,463 | 3,433 |
| Change from January to July 2024 | -2,766 | |
| Date | Fast Food Employment | Annual Change |
| Apr 2009 | 483,049 | – |
| Apr 2010 | 475,502 | -1.6% |
| Apr 2011 | 485,110 | 2.0% |
| Apr 2012 | 502,989 | 3.7% |
| Apr 2013 | 528,912 | 5.2% |
| Apr 2014 | 568,194 | 7.4% |
| Apr 2015 | 598,230 | 5.3% |
| Apr 2016 | 630,370 | 5.4% |
| Apr 2017 | 658,234 | 4.4% |
| Apr 2018 | 680,123 | 3.3% |
| Apr 2019 | 699,570 | 2.9% |
| Apr 2020 | 529,699 | -24.3% |
| Apr 2021 | 651,106 | 22.9% |
| Apr 2022 | 716,801 | 10.1% |
| Apr 2023 | 733,857 | 2.4% |
| Apr 2024 | 739,055 | 0.7% |
| Date | Fast Food Employment | Annual Change |
| Jul 2009 | 479,076 | – |
| Jul 2010 | 478,340 | -0.2% |
| Jul 2011 | 487,116 | 1.8% |
| Jul 2012 | 507,279 | 4.1% |
| Jul 2013 | 539,730 | 6.4% |
| Jul 2014 | 575,105 | 6.6% |
| Jul 2015 | 606,158 | 5.4% |
| Jul 2016 | 637,911 | 5.2% |
| Jul 2017 | 665,009 | 4.2% |
| Jul 2018 | 683,386 | 2.8% |
| Jul 2019 | 701,099 | 2.6% |
| Jul 2020 | 597,499 | -14.8% |
| Jul 2021 | 679,474 | 13.7% |
| Jul 2022 | 725,206 | 6.7% |
| Jul 2023 | 735,535 | 1.4% |
| Jul 2024 | 739,463 | 0.5% |
Additionally, An EPI survey indicates these changes are here to stay if the fast food minimum wage law continues.
EPI reports:
Federal jobs data has shown California’s fast food industry has been hemorrhaging jobs for months – but how does the Golden State stack up to its Western neighbors?
A look at the data for Oregon and Nevada, the only West Coast states for which fast food industry-level data was available, show the fast food jobs loss trend is not ailing other states, and is more likely related to the aggressive $20 wage hike policy (atop California’s already exhaustive set of labor regulations).
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September 28, 2023
I wonder how the obliviously confused Deputy Director for Rapid Response would respond to the sandwich chain Subway’s latest financial issues. https://retailwire.com/subway-emergency-meeting/#:~:text=Subway%20reportedly%20called%20an%20emergency%20meeting%20with%20its,how%20to%20improve%20foot%20traffic%20and%20market%20share. If he trolls, this site I would appreciate a Rapid Response. Thankyou in advance
Newsom is a failure at everything he does. Then he has to lie to cover up his failures.
So used to the liberal lies I don’t even listen to them talk. My favorite Rubio’s just closed their doors two months ago and left the state and I see many stores closing. Applebees, Cracker Barrel, TGI Fridays are just calling it quits here. And what is not counted are the mom and pop places that cannot afford to compete for workers if they don’t pay $20 an hour but are to small to be counted in the mix with the big guys. Nothing done is Sacramento helps the avg person, its all about power.
Oliver,
Your argument that small restaurants have to pay $20 makes little sense, unless there have not been massive fast food layoffs. If the $20 an hour restaurants still are hiring, then yes, the smaller restaurants may struggle to recruit workers. In contrast if the $20 per hour restaurants are laying off many thousands of people, then the smaller restaurants should have a cavalcade of applications. Fact is even this article reports growth in 2024 over 2023, so, hmmm, where is the crisis?
Chris Stampolis
Santa Clara, CA
Any job that has a 25% to 45% pay hike is bound to have an increase of employment. Still over 1,000 fast food restaurants closed in 2024. The higher cost of fast food has led to nobody at registers taking your order. At any rate nobody can blame capitalism because outside of ownership government controls businesses.
Its not just CA thats being affected. FF chains are cutting staff and increasing automation in other states in order to funnel that money into CA increased cost. I was in a Macdonalds west of Albequerque NM several weeks ago. that had hard to use kiosks and only 2 staff. it took over 30 min to get a sausage McMuffin and nothing else.
You know, a basic economics course and a bit of common sense were more than enough to predict what would happen here as a result of the $20 minimum wage legislation: That the fast food industry and other minimum wage jobs would bleed out and be horribly injured if not lost altogether. Gov Gavin and his Entourage and the author of the job-killing bills (Asm Chris Holden) knew it too, because apparently they thought the high-profile headlines “fast-food minimum wage raised to $20 an hour” would be enough to fool their uninformed voters to Keep Voting Democrat. If anyone noticed job-loss fallout they would simply apply the thumbscrews to think and report otherwise. Bonus points for going after the middle class which is a top priority for these people of course.
Thus Gavin staffers like “Brandon” (he/him) who “reach out to” (more like “badger”) reporters like Katy Grimes only look foolish when they blindly follow orders from the Big Guy, reject direct statistical evidence, refuse to use logic, and think that LYING will be perceived as the truth and make everything right.
Nothing new here. Just watch a bit of the Dem Marxist Convention if you need a refresher on Dem Marxist bald-faced lies delivered with no originality and a super-nasty attitude.
he gonna have to revise his lies to keep up with the biden admin admitting they have been cooking the labor reports
This is a good point. The Biden administration has consistently lied about job creation and employment- quietly revising numbers downward after the positive spin.
As for Newsom’s flack-he gets paid to make stuff up. There is no truth, only spin.
Just as satan is the “great deceiver” who lies, so do his minions like Gavin Newsom and the rest of the criminal Democrat mafia who have a stranglehold of power over Californians.
Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported today that the U.S. economy created 818,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the 12-month period through March 2024 which means that all those jobs that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden claimed to have “created” over the last year aren’t actually there. Not only are the jobs numbers fraudulent, all jobs recovered post-Covid under Biden-Harris went to foreign-born workers – including illegal aliens. Per the Center for Immigration Studies: All employment growth has gone to the foreign-born. 183,000 fewer U.S.-born Americans are working than in 2019, before Covid. Yet, the number of immigrants (legal and illegal) working is up 2.9 million over 2019.
So used to the liberal lies I don’t even listen to them talk. My favorite Rubio’s just closed their doors two months ago and left the state and I see many stores closing. Applebees, Cracker Barrel, TGI Fridays are just calling it quits here. And what is not counted are the mom and pop places that cannot afford to compete for workers if they don’t pay $20 an hour but are to small to be counted in the mix with the big guys. Nothing done is Sacramento helps the avg person, its all about power.
When the Governor’s office opines on economic or employment statistics, just remember that figures don’t lie, but liars figure!
As the owner of 7 fast food locations in the Bay Area and Sacramento region, we’ve been facing a decline in sales over the past 12 months, primarily due to inflation. With customers dining out less, we’ve had to reduce hiring, cut hours, and may eventually need to cut jobs.
Governor Newsom can teach a class on lying. How has the 20.00 an hour fast food wages helped? Alls it’s done is to help people lose jobs and business’s close down and leave the state creating more homeless people.
Due to newsoms new laws about not going after these people stealing, more and more businesses has closed down. Look at areas of San Francisco where there once was thriving businesses now are boarded up. Almost all construction there has stopped. The company I worked for closed it’s doors putting hundreds of people out of work. Thank you Newsom for adding to the homeless population. I’ll make sure not to vote for you.
That’s funny because where I live they’re hiring fast food workers. Every place I go to they say they’re hiring because they’re short staff because no one wants to work. $20/hr is affordable especially for these large chains. California’s cost of living should require more jobs to have an increase in minium wage.
You know they have to hire because all the welfare workers quit to keep the checks coming in. If they work too much their checks drops. No Bueno. It is the system that has been set up in the state welfare. The people they hire won’t have many hours also
Y’all keep voting Democrat then ya get what your ask for.
New Scum has always been a failure and a lying scumbag. The idiots in our great state continues to vote democrats. unbelievable.
anyone with a unwashed brain can see for themselves what’s going on here. it isn’t just fast food joints. the whole restaurant business is in trouble. now Chevron is leaving taking billions with them. many of their employees will be leaving also. more lost tax revenue. Newsome answer that we’re still the 5th largest economy is total bs. when we end up bankrupt will you all see the light then. I doubt it.
So in 2023 there were 735k, in July 2024 745k. That is “only” a rise of 10k workers… correct?
Considering they (745k) all work 1400 hours each year and are making now 4$ more over the year then the economic impact reads 1400 x 4 x 745,000 =4,172,000,000 per annum ( 4 billion 172 million) increase in money going o workers…
Tell me again who exactly is complaining in Cali?
Jean-Pierre Scherer