California’s statewide minimum wage is set to rise next year.
Starting on Jan. 1, 2027, the statewide minimum wage will rise to $17.40 an hour, an increase Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted about on Friday.
Newsom — who has been eyeing a 2028 presidential run — said in a statement that California’s fiscal policies helped turn the state into “one of the strongest economies in the world” while the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress fail to address “everyday cost pressures for working families.” The federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 per hour since 2009.
“For years, Donald Trump and Republicans have blocked efforts to raise the federal minimum wage while handing tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations,” Newsom said. “California has chosen a different path — one that rewards work, grows the economy, and puts working families first.”
Not everyone agreed. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton took to social media on Friday to decry the minimum wage increase as an “attack on workers” that will “crush small businesses.”
The current minimum wage in California for all employers is $16.90 an hour, though some workers must be paid more to comply with city and county rules and other state laws.
California’s minimum wage automatically increases each year to keep pace with inflation. The current system was established in 2016, when then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a first-in-the-nation plan to gradually boost the state’s hourly minimum wage to $15 an hour, then adjust the wage annually based on inflation starting in 2024.
“This is about economic justice, it’s about people,” Brown said during the bill signing.
The specific amount of the minimum wage increase is tied to inflation — as measured by the federal consumer price index — and capped at 3.5%, according to state law. The state director of finance is responsible for calculating the adjusted minimum wage on or before Aug. 1 each year.
California has the highest minimum wage out of all 50 states, according to the governor’s office. (Only Washington, D.C.’s, minimum wage ranks higher, at $18.40.)
Researchers have been split on the economic impacts of the pay increase for fast-food workers, which chains like Pizza Hut and Cinnabon have fought. (Earlier this year, a major Carl’s Jr. franchisee cited the $20 fast-food minimum wage when he applied for bankruptcy protection.)
California also has higher minimum wages for healthcare workers at large facilities as a result of a union-backed bill Newsom signed in 2023. Under the legislation, many healthcare workers’ minimum wages in July rose from $24 an hour to $25 an hour.
Some cities in California, including Emeryville and West Hollywood, have opted to impose even higher city minimum wages exceeding $20 per hour.
Most states have minimum wages above the federal minimum. Five Republican-led states — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee — do not have an independent state minimum wage and default to the federal minimum.
While a 2019 Pew Research Center poll found that two-thirds of Americans support raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, a deep partisan split over the issue remains.
Employers are bracing for what could be the highest rise in health insurance premiums in 16 years in 2027, driving up the average cost of family coverage in California to more than $30,000 — the price of a new compact car.
Health insurance companies expect the cost of medical services and prescription drugs to soar by 9% in 2027, according to a new survey by PwC, the highest rise the researchers have found since 2011. Insurers use those expected medical costs to calculate the price of premiums in the coming year. Many employers require workers to pay part of that cost.
Experts say the escalating costs of employers’ premiums are reducing workers’ wages and take-home pay, while raising the prices of goods and services in California and across the country.
“It’s going to erode the standard of living for lots of California families,” said Glenn Melnick, a USC professor of healthcare finance.
Melnick said when employers are forced to spend more on health insurance, there is less money available for wages. The skyrocketing premiums, he said, are like a hidden pay cut for working families.
The higher cost also has small-business owners wondering whether they can continue paying for their workers’ health insurance.
Co-owner Camden Avery makes a sale at the Booksmith in San Francisco.
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
This year, premiums for staff at the Booksmith, an independent bookstore on Haight Street in San Francisco, leaped by 17%, said Christin Evans, the store’s owner. Next year could bring even more pain. The monthly premium for four employees is $3,250.
To try to cope, Evans said, she has reduced staff hours by closing the store earlier.
“We have to absorb it,” she said. “We’re not paying the wages we want to pay or delivering the customer service we’d like to deliver.”
Seventeen million Californians receive health benefits from an employer. Those premiums have been rising faster in California than the national average.
Between 2022 and 2025, the average family premium for employers in the state rose by 24% to $28,397, according to a survey by KFF and the California Healthcare Foundation. That was nearly double the 12.2% increase in consumer prices during those years.
Hospital, pharmaceutical and other medical costs escalated even faster after 2025.
PwC’s annual survey of insurers last year found an expected rise of 8.5% in 2026, which its researchers later revised to 9%.
A key driver of the rising medical costs, according to experts, is prices charged by hospitals. In recent years, some health systems, including UCLA and Cedars-Sinai, have grown larger by buying nearby hospitals and expanding their clinics, becoming more dominant in the community and reducing competition.
Melnick said the expansion of some health systems into giant organizations means that they can “tell insurance companies what the price will be.”
A Cedars-Sinai spokesperson pointed to a 2022 paper that found that for-profit health system prices had escalated faster than those at nonprofit systems like Cedars. The paper was partly funded by Cedars.
“Cedars-Sinai Health System’s growth in recent years has expanded access to the highest levels of patient care and medical innovation across the Los Angeles region,” the spokesperson said.
UCLA did not respond to requests for comment.
Another factor is the rising cost of prescription drugs. Spending on cancer drugs, the most costly category, reached $143 billion in 2025, an annual increase of 12%, the PwC survey found.
The nation’s spending on obesity medicines, including GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, soared by 81% last year, PwC said. A 30-day supply of the drugs lists for more than $1,000.
The obesity drug manufacturers say the medicines can reduce medical expenses by preventing other costly conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, but data don’t yet show such reductions, PwC said.
Researchers at the California Healthcare Foundation say a large part of the problem is that hospital operating costs, prescription drug prices and doctor fees have been allowed to grow unchecked for decades.
The foundation estimated in a report last year that 25 cents of every dollar spent in California — more than $73 billion each year — does nothing to help patients. Instead it goes to excessive profits for providers, administrative red tape and other waste, the foundation found.
California employer premiums are expected to rise next year for another reason: Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers agreed in June to raise taxes on the private plans to help pay for the cost of Medi-Cal, which covers the medical costs for the poor, and to help balance the state budget.
The California Assn. of Health Plans said insurers will add the tax to next year’s premiums. The trade group estimates the higher tax will cost each insured person $100 next year or $400 for a family of four.
The higher tax must still be approved by the Trump administration. Republicans in the state Assembly wrote a letter to the administration this month, asking officials to deny the request.
Researchers also expect a jump in premiums for families without employer insurance who purchase policies on state marketplaces such as Covered California. Some of those families faced double-digit increases this year because of rising medical costs and the end of enhanced federal subsidies that Congress had approved as a temporary measure during the pandemic. Almost 400,000 Californians dropped their Obamacare plans this year as prices soared.
To deal with the higher premiums, some employers are changing the design of their health plans to shift more of the cost to workers by raising deductibles and co-pays.
Those higher out-of-pocket costs are just the beginning of the fallout. Twenty-two percent of chief financial officers surveyed by Mercer in February said the high price of health benefits had forced them to stop hiring or led to layoffs. Thirty-six percent of those executives said the rising premium costs have harmed workers’ wages and raises.
Candice Elliott, a human resources consultant in Santa Cruz, said smaller businesses such as restaurants struggle to find ways to cover the higher costs.
Many restaurants, Elliott said, already have a slim margin between their revenues and expenses. When premiums rise, she said, some restaurants have added a fee to the customer bill to help cover workers’ health costs. Others have hiked menu prices.
“That impacts affordability for the consumer,” Elliott said. “It makes inflation greater.”
Some small businesses have moved from so-called silver plans to the lower-priced bronze plans, she said, which cover less of the employee’s monthly premium. “It’s effectively a decrease in pay for the employee,” she said.
Others are hiring employees overseas, Elliott said. “You can pay someone in the global south half of what you pay an American and still afford them a good standard of living and benefits that are unaffordable in the U.S.,” she said.
Melnick, the USC professor, said many workers don’t realize how much they are losing as their employers’ premiums rise. He tells people to look at their W-2 tax form from last year, where employers are required to report the cost of the employee’s premium in box 12, under “Code DD.”
He said USC’s premium for his family of four is $45,000.
“The base is so high that even a small increase has a big impact,” he said. The continuing annual increases, he said, are “bad news for everybody.”
The Writers Guild of America sued Paramount on Tuesday, alleging that the company’s planned $111-billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery violates federal antitrust law. The union said that with fewer competitors, the merged Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery business would be able to lower costs by reducing writers’ wages and work.
“Writers will be paid less and have fewer employment opportunities,” the WGA said in its lawsuit.
The move comes a day after California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta led a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general who filed a federal lawsuit to block Paramount Skydance’s $111-billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Bonta has separately asked a judge in San Francisco for a temporary restraining order to hold up the deal while his case is pending in court.
“We feel we have a very strong case,” Bonta said Tuesday during a town hall meeting. “This proposed merger will raise prices. It will lower quality. It will reduce output. It will hurt the American people, and it’ll hurt the the economy and competition.”
The writers guild’s missive creates a second line of attack against tech scion David Ellison’s industry-reshaping deal.
Ellison’s proposed merger has been moving closer to the finish line after securing approvals from the U.S. Justice Department and numerous other foreign governments. President Trump, an ally of Ellison’s billionaire father Larry Ellison, favors the deal.
David Ellison wants to close the deal by September to avoid a higher payout to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders.
A Paramount spokeswoman said the company is reviewing the lawsuit.
The proposed merger has sparked fears in Hollywood that it would bring thousands of job losses — similar to past consolidations, including Walt Disney Co.’s 2019 takeover of Fox entertainment properties.
“The Writers Guild of America will not stand idly by as Paramount attempts to violate our country’s antitrust laws and deepen the contraction entertainment workers already feel,” said Writers Guild of America East President Tom Fontana in a statement. “This proposed combined entity would be the largest employer of writers, with tremendous power to suppress our wages, eliminate opportunities for emerging writers, cut jobs across the industry, and produce less programming, affecting the range of storytelling. This merger is not inevitable and we are fighting to stop it.”
June 17 (UPI) — Oklahoma voters have rejected raising the state’s nation-lowest minimum wage as several states held primaries on Tuesday.
The Sooner State sets its minimum at $7.25, the federal minimum wage floor, tying it with 19 other mostly Republican-led or -leaning states for the nation’s lowest. Oklahoma raised its minimum wage to $7.25 in 2009 to comply with federal law.
Voters were asked in State Question 832 whether Oklahoma employers must pay employees at least $15 per hour by 2029, putting the state above the median of $11.63 an hour but still below the highest-wage states.
However, voters rejected the move. Unofficial state results show that with 1,984 precincts reporting, 55.3% of voters said “no” to State Question 832, compared to 44.6% in favor of raising the minimum wage.
“Oklahomans sent a clear message: We can grow our economy, create opportunities and keep life affordable without one-size-fits-all mandates that make it harder for businesses to hire and grow,” Chad Warmington, State Chamber of Oklahoma president and CEO, said in a press release.
The initiative was championed by Raise the Wage Oklahoma, which had argued that raising the state’s minimum wage would ensure tens of thousands of workers are better paid while helping wages keep up with rising costs.
“But the fight doesn’t end here. Because a better Oklahoma is worth fighting for.”
Oklahoma voters also heavily backed Rep. Kevin Hern for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat held by Markwayne Mullin until March, when he was sworn in as secretary of Homeland Security, replacing Kristi Noem.
“Oklahomans deserve strong conservative leadership and a senator who will fight for your values,” he said on social media Tuesday night.
“I look forward to earning your support again in November and serving as your next United States senator!”
Unofficial state results show he secured 69.7% of the vote, with only one other candidate — Gary England — netting a double-digit vote share with 13.5%.
Hern will face the winner of the Aug. 25 Democratic runoff between N’Kiyla “Jasmine” Thomas and Jim Priest.
Meanwhile, the GOP gubernatorial primary appears to be heading to a runoff.
Nine Republican candidates vied for the governorship, but none surpassed the 50% threshold. Gentner Drummond had secured the highest number of votes with 26.26% of the vote share, followed by Mike Mazzei with nearly 26%. No other candidate broke 20%.
Samsung Electronics Co.’s unionized workers voted to approve a wage agreement, the union said Wednesday. This photo, taken Wednesday, shows Samsung headquarters in Suwon. Photo by Yonhap
Samsung Electronics Co.’s unionized workers voted to approve a wage agreement that includes a substantial bonus package for chip workers, the union said Wednesday, easing concerns over potential disruptions to the global supply chain.
In the six-day vote, 73.7 percent of the 62,616 members of the tech giant’s two largest unions approved the tentative deal. The agreement was finalized after a majority of eligible voters took part in the vote and a majority voted in favor of the proposal.
Later in the day, the two sides signed the wage agreement, with management pledging to strengthen the company’s global competitiveness.
“Starting with the conclusion of this wage agreement, labor and management will work together as one to strengthen our global competitiveness,” Yeo Myeong-gu, head of the company’s Device Solutions division’s People Team, said in a press release.
The labor union and management reached the agreement just an hour before an 18-day strike was set to begin at the world’s top memory chipmaker last Thursday.
Labor and management had been deadlocked since late last year over performance-based bonuses tied to earnings from the company’s artificial intelligence (AI)-related semiconductor business amid the ongoing global memory chip boom.
Under the deal, Samsung will allocate a special semiconductor performance bonus equivalent to 10.5 percent of business performance earnings, without a cap.
The special bonuses will be paid in company stock over at least 10 years, based on targets for the chip division to achieve more than 200 trillion won (US$132 billion) in annual operating profit from 2026 to 2028 and 100 trillion won from 2029 to 2035.
Of the total bonus pool, 40 percent will be allocated to the division as a whole, while 60 percent will be distributed to individual business units.
Based on forecasts that Samsung’s operating profit could reach 300 trillion won this year, the agreement could translate into bonus payouts of up to 600 million won for each of the 28,000 employees in the company’s profitable chip division.
Following the signing, the company announced it will create a 5 trillion-won fund over the next five years to invest in future talent development and build an ecosystem supporting its suppliers and underprivileged groups.
“Over the next five years, we will raise a total of 5 trillion won to invest in win-win cooperation and building a healthy ecosystem, as well as nurturing future talent,” according to the statement attributed by company executives.
The move is widely seen as an effort to counter criticism that the company has been distributing massive profits from the semiconductor supercycle as excessive employee bonuses.
Copyright (c) Yonhap News Agency prohibits its content from being redistributed or reprinted without consent, and forbids the content from being learned and used by artificial intelligence systems.
