CA Minimum Wage Initiative Fails to Make Ballot

An initiative to raise California’s minimum wage won’t make the ballot this November.

Here’s the details from a report in the Record Searchlight.

“The Living Wage Act was excluded from the November election because of a failure in the initiative process, but the basics are intriguing: a raise in the minimum wage for workers to $18 an hour by 2025, with smaller businesses given until 2026 to comply. That would race well ahead of the state’s current schedule, under which the inflation-adjusted minimum will rise to $15.50 in 2023 and is projected to hit about $16.50 by 2025.”

Even $18 an hour might not be enough according to some research from MIT cited in the report.

“For two adults with one child living in California, a single worker in that household would need to make $40.78 an hour under the MIT model. If both adults worked, the figure would be about $24 an hour per adult. That is a statewide average, of course; the two adults with one child, one adult working figure is $41.47 in Los Angeles County and $53.63 in San Francisco County, while in Shasta County, it drops to $34.64.”

The Record Searchlight report is well done, and addresses the concerns Californians have with the incredibly high cost of living in the state.

What’s not mentioned in this report, or any of the discussions about raising the minimum wage, is the impact of mass immigration on the labor market.

We’ve written before about the effects of immigration on wages.

In a blog published on Labor Day, we referenced numerous academic research studies on how immigration affects wages.

The noted Harvard professor George Borjas has written extensively on the negative effect immigration has on wages.

Borjas’ research indicates that a 10% increase in workers decreases wages by 3%.These effects are most commonly felt by America’s working class as a result of low skilled immigration.

We also cited Steven Camerota’s of the Center for Immigration Studies report on how immigration lowers wages.

What’s crushing is how California continually ignores the concerns of its citizens in favor of illegal aliens.

The state has no problem giving out a myriad of free programs to illegal aliens, but ignores the state’s homelessness problem.

Californians should look deeper into this issue in order to understand the full scope of why wages aren’t rising.

It’s one of the most overcrowded, expensive states in the entire country which has experienced a massive influx of both legal and illegal immigration.

If California’s state government focused on tackling the immigration issue, Californians would get the wage increase they so desperately need.