New York City restaurants are eliminating jobs, reducing employee hours and raising prices due to the higher costs of the $15-per-hour minimum wage.
A once-growing industry is contracting, according to an online survey conducted by the New York City Hospitality Alliance, an association representing restaurants in the city.
Last year, “full-service restaurants recorded a 1.6 percent job loss, which is the first recorded annual loss in two decades,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the trade group.
The survey also said about a third of respondents will eliminate jobs and most will raise prices this year because of the new $15-an-hour law backed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other state officials, which took effect on Dec. 31, 2018.
A total of 76.5 percent of full-service restaurant respondents reduced employee hours, and 36 percent eliminated jobs in 2018, the survey said.
Also, 75 percent of limited-service restaurant respondents reported that they will reduce employee hours, and 53 percent will eliminate jobs in 2019 as a result of the wage increases, according to the survey.
The governor, through a spokeswoman, defended state policies: “All New Yorkers deserve to make a living wage and under the governor’s leadership, more minimum-wage workers than ever before have received an increase in their wages. The fact is that increasing the minimum wage puts more money in the pockets of hardworking New Yorkers, which creates more demand for local businesses and increases economic activity.”
A spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio didn’t respond with a comment.
The Hospitality Alliance said, “The results of this survey, and other industry trends, signal that a once-growing industry responsible for hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic impact has become stagnant.”
But here in NZ, it will be different because we have been told by Cindy that putting up the minimum wage will not have any affect on employment.
Toothy is enslaved by her ideological dogma, and too stupid to foresee the consequences of her actions, therefore is doomed to repeat all of history’s mistakes.
Government decree raising the minimum wage for employers is effectively the same as raising taxes on them. Compulsory payment either funnelled through IRD and out to the needy, or ordered by the CoL to pay salary increases directly to staff. TAX!
These low paid employees need all the support we can give them. You try living on the minimum wage. It would be better if some didin’t bother to get a job, as it will cost them more to go to work than what they would earn at work.
Spoken like someone who has never been poor.
Spoken like someone who has never been an employer. Fairydust is a true believer in Cindy’s nirvana.
I welcome her and any of her mates to have their say. The No 1 thing the Left can’t seem to figure out is money doesn’t grow on trees. Every cent the Govt spends had to be earned by some chump getting their butt out of bed and getting stuck into the daily routine of employment.
I did live on the minimum wage- when i was 17 to 18. It’s not a career wage. The bottom line is, people do not give their money away. They tried the same thing in Seattle a few years back. Same results. The actual buying power of people on an artificially increased minimum wage declined. You get more per hour, but now less hours. Employer breaks even.
You may remember ObamaCare in the USA? Thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of 40-hour staff now found they are 32-hour staff. That way the employer doesn’t have to contribute.
That’s the reality of doing business.
There are opportunities and non monetary benefits to being in employment, do you think sitting on the couch is better?
Some of us are also aware that there is a black economy that beneficiaries especially have the time to benefit from as they have their ‘base income’.
Perhaps your beef should be with the teachers that have allowed so many of ‘us’, to be essentially illiterate,
I spent a few years as the working poor. A failed venture where we worked 14 to 18 hour days. I remember walking past Caltex on the way home and a few of us would chip in for a bread and baked beans. Ate like that for far too long. Better now, much better, but damn. Poverty was a good incentive to work smarter, upskill and find a better future for myself. It took a while to save enough for a plane ticket and visas to here. I arrived here with about a $1000 in my pocket and enough support for a month of job hunting. 20 long damn years of hard work ago. Now I am in a happy, comfortable place. And a whole lot further I want to go.
ANYTHING is possible. If you want it enough, you can achieve it especially in NZ with the opportunities available to EVERYONE.
But to free people to achieve, we really need you Lefties to stop buying their votes by keeping them in poverty.
It will be interesting to see if this has any effect on that American scourge of tipping. There may be some pushback from punters already paying higher prices before adding the customary tip
The Workers of the World actually earning a living is more important than the Fat Cat business owners chomping their cigars and counting their filthy lucre…
Right…because all business owners are fat cats.
What about someone who wants to start a business? Are they rich on day zero?
Most businesses fail in two years. Did those owners become fat cats in those two years or could you consider that they went broke?
What an utterly ignorant thing to say. You obviously have no idea that most businesses in NZ are owned by small business owners, usually husband and wife putting their all into starting from scratch. My husband started a business while I continued to go out to work full-time. You have no idea the number of hours worked, and weekends worked, hours spent researching in the middle of the night, sleepless nights, being a good employer employing staff with all their issues, some of who took advantage of us evil employers, legal issues that cost a fortune for a small company. Luckily we are well experienced and have a successful business we are proud of. We don’t need ill-informed, jealous people like you, but you need our taxes to fund your mindless university indocrination and “activist” lifestyle. Why don’t you actually wait until you have some actual life experience under your belt before you make ill-informed and derogatory comments about people you know nothing about. Uninformed pillock!
Activists get paid?
Moreover, what is with the infantile hatred of the productive? Without us – none of your policies could be paid for. You’d be back to eating worms from under rocks or the fleas off your back.
Earning a living from whom?
Fat Cat lol. I started a business about 15 months ago, and it’s starting to take off-slowly. It pays the bills and i get a few good tax write-offs. I can look forward to an income of 100K to 200K a year for the rest of my working life. BUT- i’m 47 and have been working my ass off since the age of 16. It has taken me 30 years to get to that sort of income level. I’m hardly chomping expensive cigars or sipping the finest booze.
Good to hear ducklin. Entrepreneurs are special people. I’m not one but I live with one! He never stops amazing me. I’m very proud of what we have achieved (with my input and support) and are now enjoying the fruits of a clever idea.
Good luck with your enterprise.
Nothing to do with the fact that more people are working? too many eating places? Less immigrants to exploit?
I always say that we have a very high miniumum wage here in NZ
It is our living costs that are expensive.
Higher wages just mean less exports, less tourists and less jobs
Walmart are increasing their automation to “allow their workers to do more interesting jobs and get higher wages”
yeah right! They are bringing in robots to do cleaning, unload trucks and fill shelves.