In the legislative session’s waning days, California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom approved deals for two major pay increases for healthcare and fast food employees. But the cost to employers and the impact on the broader economy is only now starting to become clearer.
The minimum wage hike for healthcare workers won passage without a firm cost estimate, writes CalMatters’ health care reporting intern Shreya Agrawal.
Now, the Newsom administration is releasing projections that the $25 hourly wage that will eventually cover more than 500,000 employees will cost government agencies $4 billion in 2024-25 (with about half coming from the state’s general fund and the other half paid from the federal government).
In the private sector, hospitals estimated that the original bill, which would have immediately increased wages to $25, would cost them $8 billion. The final version — agreed to by unions and the hospitals association — gradually raises pay, with most workers earning $25 in 2027 or 2028.
The recent cost estimate from Newsom’s office isn’t surprising to Republican legislators who opposed the bill. Expressing concerns for reduced services and job opportunities, Republican Assemblymember Vince Fong of Bakersfield said the measure “places astronomical labor costs on health care providers when hospitals across the state deal with financial losses.”
But Sen. María Elena Durazo, the Los Angeles Democrat who wrote the bill, points to data from the UC Berkeley Labor Center...
Congress leaders Harshwardhan Sapkal and Nana Patole, Nationalist Congress Party (SP) legislator Rohit Pawar, and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said PM Modi's sp...