This year restaurant employment in the major metropolitan areas with minimum wage increases has consistently experienced slower growth than restaurant employment in the rest of their states.

By Ben Gitis, Director of Labor Market Policy at the American Action Forum. Excerpts:

"For each metropolitan area, we measure the growth in food services and drinking places employment in 2015. Consequently, we measure the percent change in food services and drinking places employment from December 2014 to September 2015, the most recent month with available data. We do the same for the state that the metropolitan area is located in and exclude the metropolitan area itself."

"We then combine food services and drinking places employment in all of the metropolitan areas and combine employment in all of the metropolitan areas’ surrounding states. This allows us to compare restaurant employment growth in all the metropolitan areas that raised the minimum wage together to restaurant employment growth in all of the rest of the states together."

"The chart below shows that restaurant employment in metropolitan areas with cities that raised the minimum wage in 2015 has lagged behind employment in the rest of the states.



Clearly, restaurant employment has grown far slower this year in cities that raised the minimum wage than in the rest of the states in which those cities are located. This year restaurant employment in the metropolitan areas with major cities that raised the minimum wage only grew 1.1 percent through September. In the surrounding state areas, however, restaurant employment grew 2.8 percent."

"Restaurant employment in the major cities that raised the minimum wage this year has consistently been slower than the rest of the states in which the cities are located. Restaurant employment in Louisville grew 2.6 percent, 1.1 percentage points lower than restaurant employment growth in the rest of Kentucky. In Seattle, where the minimum wage is increasing to $15 per hour, restaurant employment has only grown 0.6 percent this year while restaurant employment in the rest of the state of Washington grew 6 percent.[1] In the other city that is phasing in a $15 minimum wage, San Francisco, restaurant employment only grew 1.4 percent and in the rest of California it grew 3.2 percent.

There are also a few exceptions in the major cities we examine. In particular, restaurant employment in Chicago grew at about the same rate as in the rest of Illinois (0.5 percent versus 0.4 percent). Also, restaurant employment in Oakland grew faster than the rest of California (4.1 percent versus 3.2 percent). Despite the faster growth in Oakland, however, restaurant employment in the three major cities of the San Francisco Bay Area only grew 1.9 percent. That is 1.7 percentage points slower than the 3.6 percent growth in restaurant employment experienced in the rest of California."