California governor signs $15 minimum wage bill into law

California will have the highest wage floor.

(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

last updated 4 April 2016

California Gov. Jerry Brown officially signed a bill into law on Monday to make state minimum wage $15 an hour by 2022. The state will bump up its minimum wage to $10 an hour by next year, $11 an hour in 2018, and add an hourly raise of $1 until 2022 barring an economic recession.

The legislation received no Republican support, with the executive director of the state's branch of the National Federation of Independent Business, Tom Scott, saying the $15 hour minimum will have a "devastating [impact] on small business in California."

For The Week, however, Jeff Spross argued that the $15 minimum has found a perfect testing ground in the Golden State. "California isn't a single city like Seattle; it's a huge state with lots of different labor markets, from Silicon Valley to downtown Los Angeles to small town farming […] We'll be able to see how lots of different labor markets in California are affected, along with lots of different categories of workers: those without college degrees, those under 25 years of age, and so forth."

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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