Minimum wage hike in Los Angeles hotel industry has negative impacts
Los Angeles, California, passed a phased-in minimum wage hike ordinance on May 27, 2025. Nicknamed “Olympic Wage” in advance of the Olympics, minimum wages for the hotel industry will be set at $30 per hour by 2028. However, this move is already negatively impacting the people it was intended to help. Hours are being cut, hotel restaurants are being closed, and planned improvements are either being delayed or cancelled. The workers who are losing their jobs are the ones who the ordinance was supposed to help.
From Fox News:
HALA recently commissioned a study that found hotels have eliminated or expect to eliminate 6% of positions, roughly 650 jobs, since the Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance took effect in September 2025.
Mayor Bass signed the ordinance into law May 27, 2025, after it was approved by the Los Angeles City Council. The measure is often referred to as the “Olympic Wage” in reference to the sporting event being held in Los Angeles in 2028 and will raise pay for hotel and LAX airport workers up to $30 per hour by 2028.
The law has already resulted in a pay increase to $22.50 per hour in July 2025, and will continue to increase incrementally until it hits $30 in July 2028. Filla says she is urging elected officials from the city council to the mayor to make “amendments” to the ordinance to ease the burden on the hospitality industry.
“We are at the very beginning of the series of these increases and hundreds of hotel workers have already lost their jobs,” Filla said. “Even more are seeing their hours reduced. We’ve seen restaurant closures within hotels, parking is already getting more expensive, and improvements and the creation of new buildings altogether are being delayed or canceled. So taken together, these impacts should really sound alarm bells for our local policymakers.”
In many instances, the workers who lose their jobs are working-class or blue-collar individuals and Filla pointed out that many managers and general managers started off as cooks or dishwashers and advanced through executive training programs which now are less available due to financial shortfalls.
The study put out by HALA found that a significant number of the jobs lost have been labor-intensive positions like food and beverage, housekeeping, and parking.
Additional Reading:
Miller, A. M. (2026, March 7). ‘Utterly unaffordable’: Study reveals how deep blue city’s minimum wage law is ravaging key industry. Fox News. Link.
Yesterday I spoke with a socialist in Canada; today I spoke with a socialist in California. They both agreed the higher the minimum wage, the less the minimum wage was worth. The Californinian & I both worked when the minimum wage was under $2/hour; she agreed $2/hour bought a lot more then than $2/hour buys today. The Californinian ask what could be done; I replied she should stop voting for the demonrats. The Canadian was still getting over his shock when I said not all Vermonters like Sanders; as a lot of us in California don’t like Gavin the nuisance.
This is all that can be said about that!
What can I say, It’s Kalifornia..
We can always count on California D-rats to be complete and total idiots!
Eventually, as they slowly but surely run off everyone, they’ll have the same federal voting power as Wyoming and Alaska….
Getting rid of the illegal aliens alone will cost that State a number of seats!
And likely about half a million illegal votes.
This article and what it reports is exhibit A in why commies should never have their hands on the levers of political power. They constantly do stupid shit like this that makes the lives of little people worse. $30 per hour is of little value to a hospitality worker who has no job and can’t move out of Commiefornia.
I’m no economist, but it seems like basic math. Force companies to pay higher wages, and they need to raise prices and/or cut jobs and hours. We see something similar with a lot of retail jobs. Full-time positions are relatively rare, with most employees being part-time and working well under the minimum number of hours that would see them get benefits. Even something as simple as paid time off (PTO) cuts into the bottom line, so if I can have three employees split a 40-hour work week, it’s cheaper than paying one employee and having to provide sick time, vacation, and other benefits. Plus, if one of those part-time employees happens to call off, there’s a chance one of the other two is willing to come in early or work later. Don’t worry, we’ll cut your time later in the week…
Let’s say I’m a hotelier who rents rooms for $150 a night. I have two employees for the overnight shift. During the day, I run two full-time shifts of four people. Two employees run the continental breakfast each morning, and three housekeepers are all part-time and account for about four hours of work each. So, 10 full-time employees accounting for 80 hours, plus another 20 hours between the five part-timers. Let’s say average pay is $15/hr. That’s $1500/day in payroll, or 10 rooms rented out.
Big .GOV comes in and says I’ve got to double my wages. The problem is that my hotel only has 100 rooms available, and occupancy is rarely at 100%. In a perfect world, I’m spending 10% on wages, but now I’ve got to spend 20%.
I can increase rates to $300, but no one will want to pay them. Or I can eliminate the continental breakfast, doing away with that expense plus the two employees, cut my night shift to one, and cut my day shifts to two. Payroll remains roughly the same as before, albeit with nearly half the employees making double the pay.
The employees who are kept on are happy in the above scenario, but I’m a fair guy who wants to reward my loyal employees, so instead of cutting jobs, I’ll simply cut hours. Maybe I’ll keep a couple of full-time positions and halve the number of hours everyone else gets. Maybe I’ll hire a couple more housekeepers and expect all the work to be done within two hours after checkout. Either way, payroll can’t go up much if I want to keep my hotel, so employees will suffer one way or another.
Any way you look at it, $30/hr. isn’t going to be sustainable for any business that wants to keep its current workforce intact without significantly raising prices. Sure, people might argue that even with reduced hours, employees are taken care of–after all, if I make $120/day regardless, isn’t it better that I only work four hours instead of eight? But I’m willing to bet that the majority of companies affected aren’t worried about their employees so much as they are their bottom line. The funny thing is that I expect exempt (salaried) employees will be as upset about the minimum wage increase effects as anyone else. When it’s much cheaper to simply have the $50k/year junior manager fill in for a lack of $30/hr. worker bees, that manager is going to be hating life while working 60+ hour weeks.
Egg-a-muffin and a chock-o-lot milk just went from
$7 to $8 here. That’s pretty steep and not sustainable.
I see eggzactly what you mean, ok, I won’t egg you on for a reply.
Around here most of the hotels, convenience and liquor stores as well as Subway shops are run by large Indian immigrant families who pay their kids a small wage off the books and under the table with no taxes or minimum wage involved.
The local business owners can’t keep up and end up after a few years selling out their business to the m and the process continues.
It’s the same down this way. I stayed at a SpringHill Suites by Marriott in the Richmond, VA area few months ago. It was the first time in quite a while I hadn’t been greeted by Indians or Pakistanis when checking in. Just about every cheap motel I stay in (usually Motel 6 due to their dog-friendly policies) seems to be run and operated by at least three generations of immigrants.
Last January I had to travel for a funeral. On the way back I stopped at a fairly nice hotel for the night. Overnight (after 6PM) anyone checking in for the night did it using an electric kiosk. As for the breakfast the next morning there were packaged breakfast sandwiches in a warmer, some yogurt in a cooler and a thermos of two types of coffee. Yes a couple pastries and a few pieces of fruit, no one running the “breakfast” area and the main desk still manned by the kiosk.
Yeah it was a small town but that was still a bit of a surprise.
Well,,, Duhhhh!
No worries. They will find the sole remaining billionaire in California and have him finance the state
I’m confused. A certain domestic terrorist that often shares his misinformed opinions here wrote that California has one of the strongest economies in the country, and that people are willing to pay high dollar for a 643 square foot bungalow.
What gives?
First thing that popped into my mind was that he’s full of shit.
Well done, LA!
They ignored the warnings, and are now getting a lesson in the Law of Unintended Consequences……and economic reality.
The leftist law of demand and supply.
If you demand a $30.00 an hour minimum wage.
You will be supplied with unemployment and higher cost of living.
The PDRK (peepuls demokratik repugnant of kalifornya) has once again proven that demokrats haven’t a clue about basic economics. The seem to be pathologically allergic to something as basic as economics 101, instead replacing that entire phase of curriculum in college with gender studies. Freaking damn morons.
Didn’t Washington state/Seattle try that (on a slightly lower scale – (sigh…) inflation) some years back? And didn’t the same things happen? Businesses closing, jobs lost, reduced hours?
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Liberal economists would explain the economies of Washington State or Oregon are different than adjacent states, like California, Montana…you know the deal.
For Lars’ Cali-minded TDS… in an almost-meme:
How funny were the comments he made at Jesse Jackson’s funeral, after the son expressly asked the event not be made political?
I laughed my ass off.
Jesse’s son is mightily pissed about that:
https://twitchy.com/dougp/2026/03/08/watch-al-sharpton-when-jesse-jacksons-son-slammed-obama-biden-and-clinton-for-taking-swipes-at-trump-n2425817
They have been voting for that shit for decades now…
Hard to find any sympathy for these idiots.
FAFO…