NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani sells his “$30 by 2030” minimum wage plan as a lifeline for the working class, but it’s really a career-ender for the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who hold entry-level jobs.
While reducing poverty is a bipartisan objective, socialist wage floors are a utopian vision that may create economically catastrophic consequences for the Big Apple.
New York City’s minimum wage is $17 per hour, effective Jan. 1, 2026. Mamdani’s $30 proposal is a 76% increase from the current hourly wage and risks causing a shock that would spur mass layoffs and create inflation.
The city of Seattle has already seen this play out. End-of-year unemployment was 3.6% in 2022 at a $17.27 local wage floor, compared to 4.9% in 2025 at a minimum wage of $20.76. In King County, specifically, layoffs in the accommodation and fast-food industries rose from 158 in 2024 to 2,090 in 2025.
Similarly, when California raised its fast-food wage floor from $16 to $20 per hour in April 2024, approximately 18,000 laborers lost their jobs. This minimum wage hike was particularly harmful for the younger generation just entering the workforce, trying to build their initial resume and gain work experience. Youth unemployment hit a record high of 21.2% in April 2025, nearly double the national average.
Wage floors harm more than just the businesses and employees directly affected by salary changes. Increased labor costs are often passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices. In California, fast-food prices inflated by 14.5% just so establishments could remain profitable.
Small businesses are often considered the lifeblood of the U.S. economy, serving as the foundation for economic growth. Approximately 2.4 million small businesses exist in New York City, accounting for over 90% of firms who employ over half of the labor force in the private sector. A $30 minimum wage would force employers to only keep the most productive workers and cut lower-skilled employees, leading to job losses potentially impacting half of the city.
Additionally, the only businesses capable of paying an artificially high $30 per hour salary and maintaining employment levels would be larger, established firms. A wage floor may push small businesses out of the market.
Despite their consequences, minimum-wage increases are not abnormal given that 19 states recently raised their wage floors at the start of the New Year.
Socialists don’t seem to realize that when they increase wages artificially, they interfere with the natural relationship between labor supply and demand. In a competitive market, the “invisible hand” of uncoerced preferences determine price and quantity by allowing supply and demand to freely interact.
Enforcing a wage floor requires an expansion of government authority, curtailing this invisible hand, and comes at the expense of individual economic freedom, unemployment, inflation, and business flight.
Nicole Huyer is a Senior Research Associate in the Roe Institute at The Heritage Foundation. Payton Kleidon is a member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program/Tribune News Service
