Updated September 16th, 2024
California increased minimum wage for over 700,000 fast food workers on April 1st, 2024 from $16 per hour to $20 per hour. While many fast food restaurants in large cities throughout California already paid more than $16 per hour to its workers, thousands of fast food restaurants had to remain profitable despite increasing labour costs.
To better illustrate the impact of the minimum wage increase for fast food workers on fast food restaurants in California, we created this tracker which uses Google Maps data to show how many fast food restaurants have closed and other relevant data on fast food restaurants in California.
There are currently 1,040 new fast food restaurants that permanently closed since April 1st, 2024. This number represents total number of fast food restaurants that have permanently closed label (1355) currently on Google Maps minus total number of fast food restaurants that had permanently closed label (315) on Google Maps prior to April 1st, 2024. 1,040 new fast food restaurants closed in California from the date that the minimum wage law for fast food workers came into effect.
When taking into account 315 permanently closed fast food restaurants in California prior to minimum wage increase for fast food workers on April 1st of this year and the current 1355 fast food restaurants that are permanently closed as of August’s data, there is a 330% increase in new fast food restaurant closures in California post minimum wage increase.
In August, 2024 there were 0 new fast food restaurants that closed permanently according to Google Maps data. This number represents a 0% increase compared to a total of 1,355 fast food restaurants that were closed permanently in July, 2024. April had the largest month to month change in number of closed fast food restaurants so far this year with 730 which was a 132% increase compared to March’s 315.
According to gov.ca.gov, there has been a 1% increase in total number of fast food jobs in California. A total number of fast food jobs increased by 10,600 since California minimum wage increase came into effect on April 1st, 2024 based on quoted data from US Bureau Of Labor Statistics.
These aggregate job numbers include all job types (full time, part time, seasonal, etc.).
In June, 2024 there were a total of 1,942 Google reviews for fast food restaurants in California that had the keyword ‘expensive’ in them which represents a 26% increase compared to March, 2024 when total number of fast food restaurants with ‘expensive’ review was 1,536.
There is a total of 15,485 fast food restaurants in California.
LA has the most fast food restaurants among all US cities with 499 while San Diego is not far behind with 487.
Despite closure of a large number of fast food restaurants in California since the minimum wage law came into effect on April 1st, 2024, there has actually been an increase in total number of fast food jobs as well as an increase in number of consumers leaving reviews that describe fast food restaurants as expensive.