Starting today, July 1st, the new minimum wage law in Los Angeles has started. Companies with more than 25 employees will start paying an hourly minimum wage of $10.50 to their employees.
Today’s increase, a fifty-cent bump from the former minimum, is just the beginning—the law, which Mayor Eric Garcetti signed off on in June 2015, mandates that the city gradually increase the minimum wage every year until 2020, when the minimum reaches $15.
Not all L.A. businesses will be affected immediately, however; smaller businesses—those with 25 or fewer workers—will have an extra year before they take on the new wage.
According to NBC 4, for city and county businesses with more than 25 employees the minimum wage will be $12 by July 2017, $13.25 by July 2018, and $14.25 by July 2019. Businesses with 25 or less workers will take an extra year to adopt these new wages.
Some cities, while also voting to raise the minimum wage, have decided to march to their own beat. Long Beach, for example, voted earlier this year to raise their minimum to $13 by 2019.
