It’s no secret AB 1228 – California’s $20 fast food minimum wage law – has caused thousands of job losses and pushed restaurants to close or leave the state. Now, new analysis shows that even workers who kept their jobs after the new law still saw their scheduled hours shrink.
EPI analyzed Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group (CPS-ORG) survey data on usual weekly hours worked by non-tipped restaurant workers* (including fast food workers and non-service restaurant staff) – and found their average hours declined following the passage and implementation of the $20 fast food wage law in April 2024.
Looking at the relevant dates for the $20 wage law (April 2024 to present) – the CPS data shows non-tipped restaurant workers lost up to five hours per week. Over a whole year, that amounts to as many as 250 lost hours – equating to up to 7 weeks of work lost.
Regardless of the time period chosen, nontipped restaurant workers worked fewer hours in every phase following the passage of the $20 minimum wage law. Following Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature in September 2023, restaurants began bracing for the impact of the 25% wage hike in Fall 2023 and early 2024, based on national and local reporting including in the Wall Street Journal, Sacramento Business Journal, and Fox Business.
What does this mean for affected workers? Losing nearly two months of work represents up to $4,000 in lost potential income under the regular state minimum wage fast food workers were previously subject to.
This new data adds to the overwhelming mountain of evidence that California’s AB 1228 has hurt the livelihoods of local fast food employees and restaurants.
How did this law make it into the legislature? Unions pushing for unprecedented high wages claimed workers’ pay was being stolen from them via alleged “wage theft.” Yet EPI analysis found statewide, the fast food industry was responsible for a disproportionately low share of all filed wage claims – just 1.6 percent, up to five times lower than other heavily-unionized industries such as construction, manufacturing, or transportation.
Even in the hub of Los Angeles, this still holds true: According to most recent available data through April 2025 from the California Department of Industrial Relations and the federal Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, the fast food (or “limited service”) restaurant industry accounted for only 0.5% of all wage claims filed in the Los Angeles area in 2025—despite representing 4% of L.A. County’s fast food restaurant workforce in 2025.
Despite this fact, unions and sympathetic lawmakers pushed this bad legislation through – and continue to do so to other industries in the state. Yet the data on AB 1228’s negative effect on employment shows this “solution” has created even bigger problems – for a so-called problem that didn’t exist in the first place.
The data is clear: the real culprit taking pay away from California’s employees is the skyrocketing minimum wage mandates.
*Data note: Fast food workers represent roughly half of restaurant workers excluding tipped workers such as bartenders, servers, hosts and hostesses, and busboys and bar backs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If anything, this means that the decline in hours documented above is likely conservative, as workers who are marginally impacted by the mandate may be obscuring the true negative impacts.