The leftists pushing for San Francisco to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour had some salient information handed them by a report from the city’s Office of Economic Analysis: by 2019 the private sector will have approximately 15,270 fewer jobs. The report adds: “This represents approximately 2 percent of private employment in the city.”
The vote to raise the minimum wage from the current $10.74 to $15 by July 2018 will be part of the November ballot. Roughly 60,000 workers in the city make minimum wage; they comprise 11% of the city’s workforce, primarily in food services, retail, manufacturing, maintenance and repair services, according to the San Francisco Business Times.
Ted Egan, an economist for the city who supervised the report along with Asim Khan, told the Business Times, “The benefits (of the minimum wage hike) is that minimum wage workers will see significant earning increases, but the downside is slower job growth.”
Supporters of the increase claim that the city’s increasingly expensive cost of living demands the increase, critics assert that there will be fewer jobs and a drop in company spending.
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