By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

The California Governor’s Office is pushing back on the findings of

a July 2025 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

The study reports that California’s 2024 minimum wage increase to $20 for fast food workers cost the state 18,000 jobs.

Gov. Newsom’s deputy director of communications Tara Gallegos disputed the findings of the piece, adding that the research paper was linked to the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank she claimed has published “false or misleading information” about California’s minimum wage hike “that later had to be completely retracted.”

The California Assembly passed Assembly Bill (AB) 1228 in September 2023, which raised the minimum wage and formally established the “Fast Food Cou

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