Labor and Minimum Wage Policy

A recent survey of Los Angeles hotels, circulated as the city phases in a new hotel-worker minimum wage signed by Mayor Karen Bass, finds operators cutting jobs and pulling back on capital spending and hiring in response to the mandate that entry-level hotel workers reach $30 an hour by 2028. The picture in the survey and industry statements is of immediate strain: the current average hourly pay for hotel workers in Los Angeles is roughly $19, well below the eventual $30 target, and proponents of the mandate point out that $30 is close to the county’s calculated living wage for a single adult with no children ($28.92), an anchor for the policy’s rationale.