Posts tagged National Bureau of Economic Research
Op-ed: Hospital Strikes Should Be Illegal
October 7, 2026 // Hospital workers should not be legally permitted to withhold their critical labor from the patients who need them just because their union has a disagreement with management. If railroad workers can’t do it and public employees can’t do it, hospital workers should not be able to do it either. Congress should amend the National Labor Relations Act to prohibit strikes by hospital employees.
Newsom Celebrates a Higher Minimum Wage as California Jobs Struggle
August 27, 2026 // Escalating minimum wages can also push employers to scuttle plans to expand their businesses because they cannot afford inflated payrolls. In extreme cases, they shut down their companies. Who knows, some might even leave, relocating in states that aren’t hostile to businesses. And that, we remind the governor, is a “different path” indeed.
California’s Fast Food Minimum Wage Hike Cost the State 18,000 Jobs. That Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone.
October 23, 2025 // The trio looked at fast-food employment in California and found a decline of 2.64 percent between September 2023 and September 2024—six months before and after the law went into effect. During that same time period, fast-food employment in the rest of the United States slightly increased. Those different outcomes make it likely that the law caused fast-food businesses to hire fewer people, with a probable effect of lowering such employment 2.3 percent to 3.9 percent. At the middle of the range, that means about 18,000 fewer jobs in California.
Op-ed: How Teachers Can Dismantle the Teachers’ Unions
August 12, 2025 // Conservative and independent teachers, who make up the other 59 percent of the profession, are forced to fund their political opponents while union bosses like Weingarten, who pocketed over $600,000 in 2024, and Pringle, an at-large Democratic National Committee member raking in over half a million dollars annually, live lavishly. These union elites are an embarrassment to teachers who just want to teach reading, writing, and math.
Commentary California’s $20 Minimum Wage Is a Cautionary Tale for Los Angeles’ Olympic-Sized Wage Hike
July 22, 2025 // In a classic case of central planning, lawmakers in Los Angeles passed a bill in May to bring the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers to $30 by 2028, while also imposing a new $8.25 per hour mandatory health care contribution. Implementation of that bill is currently on hold as the city clerk reviews the signatures of a referendum petition that would bring the bill to a public vote in June 2026. Los Angeles’ sector-specific wage hike follows on the heels of California’s statewide $20 minimum wage mandate for fast-food workers that went into effect in April 2024. The consequences of that wage hike on the fast-food industry should be a warning sign to Los Angeles, especially as it prepares to host the 2028 Summer Olympics. Crucial to the success of those Olympic games will be the capability of the city’s hotels and its Los Angeles International Airport to serve an estimated 15 million visitors.
Op-ed: New Economic Study Finds California’s $20 Fast Food Minimum Wage Caused 18,000 Job Losses
July 16, 2025 // As the Globe warned, thousands of fast food employees lost jobs, employees’ hours were cut, and business owners had to do more with less. The data comes just over one year after AB 1228’s implementation, and as Los Angeles considers a drastic union-backed $30 wage hike for hotel and tourism workers that would follow the fast food wage law’s precedent of economic destruction, EPI reports.
California’s fast-food minimum wage is super-sizing job losses
July 15, 2025 // The damage for California doesn’t stop at job losses, as CEI has noted previously. The vast majority of California’s fast-food workers, 89 percent, have had their work hours reduced. Another 35 percent have seen their supplemental benefits reduced. Customers suffer as well. Menu prices for Golden State restaurants rose 14.5 percent between September 2023 and December 2024, nearly double the national rate of 8.2 percent for restaurants. Prices jumped 3 percent in the month after the minimum wage hike went into effect. Americans across all income groups eat fast food, but the core consumers are low-income families according to the Morning Consult. Any price increase is going to hit them the hardest.
No, Unions Aren’t Having a Resurgence—and That’s Good for Workers
May 9, 2024 // Introducing more competition to the private sector union business model could help. For that, my colleague Liya Palagashvili suggests ending the exclusive-representation clause that "provides government-granted monopoly status to a union supported by 51 percent of an employer's workers, giving it the sole authority to negotiate. This means that if some workers want a different union—for example a newer one that might raise the bar in terms of what it can offer—they are out of luck." Today, these workers aren't allowed to engage in any negotiations with their employers, and they still have to pay the original union's fees.
‘Fight for $15’? How quaint. Powerful Chicago union now wants $25 per hour minimum wage – Wirepoints
December 1, 2022 // Order employers to pay at least $25 per hour. That’s the new position of Chicago’s powerful chapter of SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, as reported by Crain’s and ABC Chicago. It would be a 60% increase in Chicago’s current wage of $15.40 per hour. SEIU wants candidates for Chicago mayor, alderman and other city offices to take a position on that increase, and “the group appears quite serious about that,” according to Crain’s. So far, no candidate has said no to the increase, SEIU told Crain’s. The union’s full candidate questionnaire is here. It seems like the ink on Fight for 15 posters has barely dried. That movement to push wages up to $15 per hour might appear to be largely successful on the surface. The Fight for $15’s “success is inspirational” to labor activists, as The Guardian reported last week.
Feds: Low unemployment, inflation, recession have economy at crossroads
September 6, 2022 // “Further, many structural barriers existed before the pandemic, including weaker skills, lack of access to affordable, good-quality child care, transportation problems, incarceration, addiction and discrimination,” they wrote. “Individually and collectively, they reduce job matching efficiency.” While they note an economy is in recession when gross domestic product falls in two consecutive quarters, they also state the National Bureau of Economic Research’s definition of a recession relies on a variety of indicators. If we’re in a recession or entering one, economists can’t predict its effects on employment.