Gov. Newsom Exposed for Gaslighting on California’s Fast Food Industry Job Loss

Since the passage of AB 1228 in September 2023, California’s privately-owned fast food restaurants have lost -6,166 jobs. Over the same period the previous year, prior to passage of AB 1228 (September 2022 through June 2023), California gained 17,528 private sector fast food jobs, according to the Employment Policies Institute.

In November, UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment was exposed for bias in downplaying the obvious devastating effects of California’s $20 minimum wage on the state’s fast food industry, obviously at the behest of the Newsom administration.

According to the Employment Policies Institute, the Berkeley IRLE report and an affiliated report from the Shift Project used alternative data sources to minimize the extent of the damage AB 1228 has already caused.

With new quarterly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Thursday showing that California has lost 6,166 total fast food jobs since the AB 1228 fast food minimum wage law went into effect, there is no doubt that Governor Newsom and his staff have been gaslighting the public and the media.

Laughably, Newsom and his staff actually claimed “California has added jobs in limited service restaurants (fast food) both since Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1228 the FAST Recovery Act in September 2023 and since the law’s new $20 minimum wage for fast food workers took effect April 1, 2024.” (emphasis Gov. Newsom’s office)

When the fast food minimum wage was bumped up to $20 an hour from the statewide $16 minimum wage in April, the fast food industry struggled. Some, like Chipotle and McDonalds, raised prices. Others invested in automated kiosks and other automated devices to help reduce the number of employees. Some stores outright closed, such as most Rubio’s Coastal Grill locations in California, the Globe reported.

Most notable, however, has been the massive amount of layoffs. While many stores let only a few employees go, others had more drastic numbers. Pizza Hut alone laid off 1,200 delivery drivers due to the higher costs. Others, including Roundtable Pizza, did the same, pushing delivery duties onto services like DoorDash and Uber Eats.

“Newsom can’t hide behind debunked reports from widely criticized economists,” Rebekah Paxton, research director at the Employment Policies Institute, told the Globe. “The BLS data speaks for itself. Jobs are down and his constituents are suffering because of this bad law. Newsom has found himself in a hole and should just stop digging.”

Paxton’s EPI reports:

This is a problem because Gov. Newsom and lawmakers were warned that job loss was inevitable if the minimum wage was increased to $20 per hour – and they arrogantly disregarded the warnings. This is more evidence of Governor Newsom and Democrats in the Legislature making policies which cripple businesses, and not caring one iota… until they are exposed.

At the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday in support of a new port of entry, the Globe reported that Newsom went off on a tangent about President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed 25% tariffs with Mexico, denouncing them as a “betrayal,” proving that his self-centered promise to “Trump proof” the state is a headline grabbing stunt.

As the Globe has noted recently, before Newsom gets too full of himself, he should at least acknowledge that millions more Californians rejected his and Democrats’ dangerous Anti-American agenda, the Globe suggested last month. Yes, even California is not nearly as blue as it once was, thanks to Gavin Newsom.

In his first term, “Trump used tariffs as a weapon — often successfully — to leverage other nations to do things that were in America’s economic and national security interests,” economist Steve Moore explains. “He famously challenged the European leaders with a deal that everyone goes to zero on tariffs.”

Moore adds, “A new analysis by the Tax Foundation finds that Biden has actually raised more money from tariffs than Trump did. So just who is the real ‘threat to free trade?’”

As the Globe reported Nov. 7th following the election and Donald Trump’s win, Newsom issued a bridled threat “to stand with states across our nation to defend our Constitution and uphold the rule of law.”

He followed that subtle threat with specifics – lawsuits against the Trump administration:

Newsom issued a proclamation convening a special session of the California Legislature “shoring up California’s defenses against an incoming federal administration that has threatened the state on multiple fronts.”

Newsom’s special legislative session is to approve a $25 million legal war chest for the state’s Attorney General to file lawsuits against the Trump administration if Trump threatens the state’s leftist policies. Newsom has waged a one-sided rivalry on President-elect Trump since Trump’s first term.

As Newsom announced about the special session, “We will work with the incoming administration and we want President Trump to succeed in serving all Americans. But when there is overreach, when lives are threatened, when rights and freedoms are targeted, we will take action.”

The only threats to rights and freedoms Californians experience are from Gov. Newsom’s own leftist policies crushing businesses, prioritizing illegal aliens and vagrant homeless drug addicts over taxpaying citizens, and forcing Californians to pay for his abortion travel industry and sanctuary state policies.

Newsom also indicated that he’s still trying to figure out why Democrats lost so badly in the November election.

A little introspection is in order for Gavin Newsom – maybe start with the fast-food minimum wage bill: introspection will help him identify his values, what he believes in, and why he thinks and acts the way he does, if it is even possible.

The overreach Newsom claims will come from the Trump administration is actually coming from Newsom’s administration – overreaching regulations and laws on California businesses; staggering taxes, restrictions on water to farmers and agriculture, killing off independent contractors, strangling the oil and gas industry resulting in fewer refineries, forcing renewable energy, ordering the end of the internal combustion engine autos by 2030, chasing businesses out of California… all while growing state government jobs – 96.5% of new jobs in California this year were government jobs.

“Newsom took a sledgehammer to the state’s restaurants when he signed the $20 fast food minimum wage law,” economist Rebekah Paxton continued. “Jobs have been smashed by thousands and the industry is struggling to stay afloat. Californians saw the devastation first hand and voted to stop the bleeding, delivering the state’s first minimum wage ballot measure rejection. It’s time California’s elected and appointed representatives wake up and stop any additional wage hikes before they can cause even more damage.”

Indeed.