California’s Low-Wage Workers and Minimum Wage [Publication Details]

Mar 11, 2024 - The first part of this report describes low-wage workers' occupations, genders, races/ethnicities, birthplaces, household structures, educational attainment, and weekly hours. The second part focuses on low-wage workers' ages. The third part compares the statewide minimum wage to various benchmarks to assess whether it is high, low, or somewhere in between.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/4878

California’s Low-Wage Workers and Minimum Wage

Mar 11, 2024 - Over the last decade, two statutes —Chapter  351 of 2013 (AB  10, Alejo) and Chapter  4 of 2016 (SB  3, Leno) —gradually have increased California ’s statewide minimum wage from $8 per hour to $16 per hour.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4878

California’s Low-Wage Workers and Minimum Wage

Mar 11, 2024 - Figure  3 shows that most low-wage workers live in households without any children under 18. Roughly 20  percent live with one child, 15  percent with two children, and fewer than 10  percent with three or more children.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4878/1

California’s Low-Wage Workers and Minimum Wage

Mar 11, 2024 - As shown in Figure  3, our estimates suggest that the share of workers in low-wage jobs declines by more than one-third between the ages of 25 and 32. This decline suggests that a substantial share of workers spend just a handful of years in low-wage jobs before moving on to mid-to-high-wage jobs.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4878/2

California’s Low-Wage Workers and Minimum Wage

Mar 11, 2024 - As shown in Figure  3, although California ’s nominal minimum wage has doubled over the last decade, the hourly wage gap between low-wage (10 th percentile) workers and average (median) workers has barely changed over that period.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4878/3

California’s Low-Wage Workers and Minimum Wage

Mar 11, 2024 - We apply this method to monthly CPS data from January 2022 through December 2023 to construct the estimates that appear in Figures 3 through 7 in the post Is California’s Minimum Wage High, Low, or Somewhere in Between?
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4878/4

The 2024-25 Budget: Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development

Feb 20, 2024 - We estimate the Governor ’s budget predicts the state ’s 2024-25 budget will need to address a $58 billion deficit . In December, our office predicted a somewhat large deficit of $68 billion . Since then, recent data has continued to point to the budget problem being larger than the Governor’s budget assumes.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4846

Fixing Unemployment Insurance

Dec 2, 2024 - During the phase ‑in period, the state also entered the dot ‑com recession. These two cost pressures absorbed the remaining flexibility in the state ’s UI tax system. As  shown in Figure  4 , the state began this period in Schedule C but quickly moved to Schedule F+, the highest tax schedule, where it has remained since.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4943

Overview of Diversity Efforts in the Film Tax Credit Program

May 1, 2025 - Comparing Figure  1 with the 2023 data in Figure  3, white, Black, and Multiple/Other individuals are overrepresented among credit recipients relative to their California population share, while Hispanic/Latino and Asian individuals are  underrepresented.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5036

The 2025-26 Budget: California’s Film Tax Credit

Feb 28, 2025 - Two notable events account for the volatility seen in Figure  3, namely COVID ‑19 and the 2023 SAG ‑AFTRA and Writer ’s Guild of America strikes, which coincide with the sharp decreases observed in 2020 and 2023 respectively.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5000