Yes, California’s Fast-Food Minimum Wage Law Has Killed Thousands of Jobs

Michael Chapman

Recent estimates on job losses in California caused by a $20 minimum wage hike for fast-food employees confirm what classical liberal economics has always taught about the minimum wage and what Cato experts said about the law last summer. 

As Milton Friedman taught, minimum wage laws “increase unemployment” and “the groups that will be hurt the most are the low-paid and the unskilled.”

In California, the raise in the minimum wage for fast-food workers from $16 to $20 was signed into law by Gov.