Southern California fast food jobs hit record high despite minimum wage hike

Southern California’s fast food restaurants saw record employment in June despite a huge jump in the minimum wage for the industry’s largest chains.

To measure hiring in the fast food job market in this $20-an-hour minimum wage era, my trusty spreadsheet looked at jobs data for “limited-service” restaurants for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Employment Development Department numbers show the four-county region had 361,500 fast food workers in June – an...