4 ms·

Here is a better article with competing studies... https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/02/fast-food-minimum-wage-studies/ https://calmatters.org/commentary/

Here is a better article with competing studies... https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/02/fast-food-minimum-wage-studies/ https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/02/fast-food-minimum-... >On Tuesday, the industry released its own impact study, conducted by the Berkeley Research Group, a private consulting firm. It found that wage increases have reduced fast food employment, shortened the hours worked, compelled fast food franchises to use more automation and resulted in markedly higher consumer prices.

giraffe_lady 1y ago
> It found that wage increases have reduced fast food employment, shortened the hours worked, compelled fast food franchises to use more automation The wage increase is the agent here? More correct to say that owners did these things in response.
- pbh101 1y ago
  One is a trigger to an otherwise steady-state dynamic system. I don’t think unreasonable to ask what effect a policy change had, net all the choices each agent has and takes in response to the change.
- qcic 1y ago
  Potato - potato. Doesn’t really matter that it was a response, the chain of events is still the same, so are the results. It the end of the day, just one more example of unintended consequences of legislation.
  - yellowapple 1y ago
    > the chain of events is still the same Ignoring the link in that chain wherein corporations chose to take various unnecessary and punative measures as retaliation against having to pay their workers more is intellectually dishonest, at best.
    - db48x 1y ago
      Laying people off to stay profitable is not punitive. It’s not desirable to be laid off, but the business isn’t punishing them.
      - yellowapple 1y ago
        Laying people off when you don't need to do so to stay profitable, however, is absolutely punitive. The restaurant industry's margins may be thin, but they ain't that thin - and I can guarantee you there's plenty fat to be trimmed from the managerial and executive pay structures long before needing to sack the minimum-wage employees.
        db48x 1y ago
        https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/punitive https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/punitive The owner of a restaurant who lays off waiters in order to spend less on salaries is not punishing the waiters. Nobody thinks that the waiters have broken any rules. The definition of “punitive” is that it is a punishment for breaking the rules. The waiters might think it’s unfair or niggardly, of course, but that’s not what “punitive” means. Pick a more appropriate word.
        yellowapple 1y ago
        > The owner of a restaurant who lays off waiters in order to spend less on salaries is not punishing the waiters. It's punishment for demanding better pay. That makes it punitive, whether the mechanism for negotiating that better pay is "we voted for (people who will vote for) a minimum wage increase" or "we formed a union so we can collectively bargain for a wage increase" or what have you. > Pick a more appropriate word. Okay, then: - Retaliatory - Self-serving - Douchebaggish Do those work better for you? Or are you going to find some other excuse to nitpick and distract from the core issue of employers being full of shit when they blame wage increases for "needing" to lay people off?
  - Spooky23 1y ago
    Labor is just one part of it. Increasing the wage 15% at worst pulled forward the transition to automation. Automating the order flow avoids even higher wages for good English speakers and kiosks drive higher margin via up sales. Automation of drink pouring reduces shrink. Eliminating cash reduces cash handling expenses and reduces refunds. I have a friend who owns a few McDonalds in a high expense state. He bitches about marketing expense share and supply cost.
- Difwif 1y ago
  It's a completely unsurprising cause and effect. What other outcome would you expect? This is a business functioning as it should.
- Justin_K 1y ago
  People said the same when factory automation came about. Wouldn't you agree that it's silly to pay a human to press the buttons you verbalize?
mindslight 1y ago
> wage increases have reduced fast food employment, shortened the hours worked, compelled fast food franchises to use more automation This sounds like all around progress to me. As always, the trick is getting the political will to take care of those displaced by progress rather than stiffing them with hard knocks until their resentment builds into support for more destructive policies like the current Great Leap Backwards.
- twoodfin 1y ago
  Historically, it’s more efficient and less of a constraint on growth to take care of those people directly via transfer payments (tax & spend) than by turning over otherwise ordinary business decisions to bureaucracy like the “California Fast Food Council”.
standardUser 1y ago
An industry report by a private consulting firm that overwhelmingly supports the position of the industry funding the report is not fascinating to me. It's obligatory propaganda. The absence of it would be fascinating.
- hnburnsy 1y ago
  Do you think the "Institute for Research on Labor and Employment" at Berkley is without biases? I would argue that the Berkley study showing positive results is flawed on wage evaluation as it uses data from Glassdoor. IMO, Glassdoor is not reliable.
  - standardUser 1y ago
    > Do you think the "Institute for Research on Labor and Employment" at Berkley is without biases? No, did I state or imply that? A private organization was paid by an industry to produce a report, and that report overwhelming supports the industry that paid for the report. How do weigh such data in your own decision-making? I give data from a public university, produced by individuals we could email right now if we wanted, individuals who presumably have reputations and career trajectories, a pretty hefty weight. Not above suspicion and not devoid of bias, but worth parsing. Is an industry report, by the industry for the industry, really worth parsing to you?
ec109685 1y ago
Did the study compare automation and hours worked between franchises across states? E.g. if California restaurants automated, but Texas ones did not, then you can attribute it to policy differences. Otherwise, it’s just guessing why restaurants took these measures.
yellowapple 1y ago
In what way is that article "better"?
- zeroonetwothree 1y ago
  It reports on the potential bias of studies and mentions there are multiple rival ones?
Spooky23 1y ago
Well obviously a study funded by the industry has zero value. They conclude what they are paid to. The industry does price segmentation now, so it’s hard to measure the prices anyway. If you order two egg McMuffins and two coffees at the counter in my city, it’s $13. With the app… $8. Im in California a few times a year. The prices if different are very marginally so.
- Rebelgecko 1y ago
  The McDonalds I've been to in California don't even have a person to take your order any more (small sample size fwiw). Is that universal now?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
free_bip 1y ago
Any study done by an industry, for said industry, is necessarily rife with large, obvious conflicts of interest. It's barely worth considering.
- db48x 1y ago
  If you think the study has flaws, point them out. Otherwise your argument is just ad hominem.
  - MilnerRoute 1y ago
    The linked-to article actually starts with the case for the wage increase. (The HN comment only quotes the one industry-funded study, which appears much further down.) From the article: "We find that the policy increased average hourly pay by a remarkable 18 percent, and yet it did not reduce employment,” a study by the UC Berkeley Institute for Research and Labor Employment concluded. “The policy increased prices about 3.7 percent, or about 15 cents on a $4 hamburger (on a one-time basis), contrary to industry claims of larger increases." This is one of those situations where everyone seems to see what they want to see. (The article notes that "Both pro and con studies used roughly the same employment data generated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency does not collect specific data on the fast food chains affected by the minimum wage legislation, so the rival researchers had to extrapolate what they contend are valid statistical bases... without some reliable data on effects, everyone involved is shooting in the dark. It will be politics, rather than fact, which governs the outcomes.")
  - free_bip 1y ago
    Are you aware of the storied history of companies outright faking data in industry "studies"? Here's a good introduction: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9263403/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9263403/
    - db48x 1y ago
      You’re doubling down on the ad hominem.
antennafirepla 1y ago
[dead]
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
Do you have a link to the industry study? I don't have a personal Dropbox [1] and don't want to use my work login. [1] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qwllx1iv8q1ecudz6z59v/BRG_Impacts-of-20-Min-Wage-Report_2.18.25_FINAL.pdf?e=1 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qwllx1iv8q1ecudz6z59v/BRG_Imp...
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  Here are two posts about the topic with opposite claims and references to BLS data. Unfortunately, the CA state page is using a broken tracking link. https://epionline.org/release/new-data-staggering-16000-jobs-lost-under-newsoms-20-fast-food-wage-law/ https://epionline.org/release/new-data-staggering-16000-jobs... https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/08/20/icymi-after-raising-minimum-wage-california-has-more-fast-food-jobs-than-ever-before/ https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/08/20/icymi-after-raising-minimu...

giraffe_lady 1y ago

> It found that wage increases have reduced fast food employment, shortened the hours worked, compelled fast food franchises to use more automation The wage increase is the agent here? More correct to say that owners did these things in response.

pbh101 1y ago
One is a trigger to an otherwise steady-state dynamic system. I don’t think unreasonable to ask what effect a policy change had, net all the choices each agent has and takes in response to the change.
qcic 1y ago
Potato - potato. Doesn’t really matter that it was a response, the chain of events is still the same, so are the results. It the end of the day, just one more example of unintended consequences of legislation.
- yellowapple 1y ago
  > the chain of events is still the same Ignoring the link in that chain wherein corporations chose to take various unnecessary and punative measures as retaliation against having to pay their workers more is intellectually dishonest, at best.
  - db48x 1y ago
    Laying people off to stay profitable is not punitive. It’s not desirable to be laid off, but the business isn’t punishing them.
    - yellowapple 1y ago
      Laying people off when you don't need to do so to stay profitable, however, is absolutely punitive. The restaurant industry's margins may be thin, but they ain't that thin - and I can guarantee you there's plenty fat to be trimmed from the managerial and executive pay structures long before needing to sack the minimum-wage employees.
      - db48x 1y ago
        https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/punitive https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/punitive The owner of a restaurant who lays off waiters in order to spend less on salaries is not punishing the waiters. Nobody thinks that the waiters have broken any rules. The definition of “punitive” is that it is a punishment for breaking the rules. The waiters might think it’s unfair or niggardly, of course, but that’s not what “punitive” means. Pick a more appropriate word.
        yellowapple 1y ago
        > The owner of a restaurant who lays off waiters in order to spend less on salaries is not punishing the waiters. It's punishment for demanding better pay. That makes it punitive, whether the mechanism for negotiating that better pay is "we voted for (people who will vote for) a minimum wage increase" or "we formed a union so we can collectively bargain for a wage increase" or what have you. > Pick a more appropriate word. Okay, then: - Retaliatory - Self-serving - Douchebaggish Do those work better for you? Or are you going to find some other excuse to nitpick and distract from the core issue of employers being full of shit when they blame wage increases for "needing" to lay people off?
- Spooky23 1y ago
  Labor is just one part of it. Increasing the wage 15% at worst pulled forward the transition to automation. Automating the order flow avoids even higher wages for good English speakers and kiosks drive higher margin via up sales. Automation of drink pouring reduces shrink. Eliminating cash reduces cash handling expenses and reduces refunds. I have a friend who owns a few McDonalds in a high expense state. He bitches about marketing expense share and supply cost.
Difwif 1y ago
It's a completely unsurprising cause and effect. What other outcome would you expect? This is a business functioning as it should.
Justin_K 1y ago
People said the same when factory automation came about. Wouldn't you agree that it's silly to pay a human to press the buttons you verbalize?

mindslight 1y ago

> wage increases have reduced fast food employment, shortened the hours worked, compelled fast food franchises to use more automation This sounds like all around progress to me. As always, the trick is getting the political will to take care of those displaced by progress rather than stiffing them with hard knocks until their resentment builds into support for more destructive policies like the current Great Leap Backwards.

twoodfin 1y ago
Historically, it’s more efficient and less of a constraint on growth to take care of those people directly via transfer payments (tax & spend) than by turning over otherwise ordinary business decisions to bureaucracy like the “California Fast Food Council”.

standardUser 1y ago

An industry report by a private consulting firm that overwhelmingly supports the position of the industry funding the report is not fascinating to me. It's obligatory propaganda. The absence of it would be fascinating.

hnburnsy 1y ago
Do you think the "Institute for Research on Labor and Employment" at Berkley is without biases? I would argue that the Berkley study showing positive results is flawed on wage evaluation as it uses data from Glassdoor. IMO, Glassdoor is not reliable.
- standardUser 1y ago
  > Do you think the "Institute for Research on Labor and Employment" at Berkley is without biases? No, did I state or imply that? A private organization was paid by an industry to produce a report, and that report overwhelming supports the industry that paid for the report. How do weigh such data in your own decision-making? I give data from a public university, produced by individuals we could email right now if we wanted, individuals who presumably have reputations and career trajectories, a pretty hefty weight. Not above suspicion and not devoid of bias, but worth parsing. Is an industry report, by the industry for the industry, really worth parsing to you?

ec109685 1y ago

Did the study compare automation and hours worked between franchises across states? E.g. if California restaurants automated, but Texas ones did not, then you can attribute it to policy differences. Otherwise, it’s just guessing why restaurants took these measures.

yellowapple 1y ago

In what way is that article "better"?

zeroonetwothree 1y ago
It reports on the potential bias of studies and mentions there are multiple rival ones?

Spooky23 1y ago

Well obviously a study funded by the industry has zero value. They conclude what they are paid to. The industry does price segmentation now, so it’s hard to measure the prices anyway. If you order two egg McMuffins and two coffees at the counter in my city, it’s $13. With the app… $8. Im in California a few times a year. The prices if different are very marginally so.

Rebelgecko 1y ago
The McDonalds I've been to in California don't even have a person to take your order any more (small sample size fwiw). Is that universal now?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

free_bip 1y ago

Any study done by an industry, for said industry, is necessarily rife with large, obvious conflicts of interest. It's barely worth considering.

db48x 1y ago
If you think the study has flaws, point them out. Otherwise your argument is just ad hominem.
- MilnerRoute 1y ago
  The linked-to article actually starts with the case for the wage increase. (The HN comment only quotes the one industry-funded study, which appears much further down.) From the article: "We find that the policy increased average hourly pay by a remarkable 18 percent, and yet it did not reduce employment,” a study by the UC Berkeley Institute for Research and Labor Employment concluded. “The policy increased prices about 3.7 percent, or about 15 cents on a $4 hamburger (on a one-time basis), contrary to industry claims of larger increases." This is one of those situations where everyone seems to see what they want to see. (The article notes that "Both pro and con studies used roughly the same employment data generated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency does not collect specific data on the fast food chains affected by the minimum wage legislation, so the rival researchers had to extrapolate what they contend are valid statistical bases... without some reliable data on effects, everyone involved is shooting in the dark. It will be politics, rather than fact, which governs the outcomes.")
- free_bip 1y ago
  Are you aware of the storied history of companies outright faking data in industry "studies"? Here's a good introduction: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9263403/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9263403/
  - db48x 1y ago
    You’re doubling down on the ad hominem.

antennafirepla 1y ago

[dead]

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

Do you have a link to the industry study? I don't have a personal Dropbox [1] and don't want to use my work login. [1] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qwllx1iv8q1ecudz6z59v/BRG_Impacts-of-20-Min-Wage-Report_2.18.25_FINAL.pdf?e=1 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qwllx1iv8q1ecudz6z59v/BRG_Imp...

s1artibartfast 1y ago
Here are two posts about the topic with opposite claims and references to BLS data. Unfortunately, the CA state page is using a broken tracking link. https://epionline.org/release/new-data-staggering-16000-jobs-lost-under-newsoms-20-fast-food-wage-law/ https://epionline.org/release/new-data-staggering-16000-jobs... https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/08/20/icymi-after-raising-minimum-wage-california-has-more-fast-food-jobs-than-ever-before/ https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/08/20/icymi-after-raising-minimu...