I don’t know what the final starting wage will be because they are still talking about it but my close friend is a head kitchen manager at a nice restaurant- they were still hiring at $13 an hour, with established cooks who have been there for a while making up to $17 an hour.
He has been struggling with kitchen staff shortages for months, call it years now, and just can’t keep up with the stress. Here’s the kicker – this manager friend used to be COMPLETELY against raising the minimum wage because “inflation”.
Until his lead cook just went up to him the other day and said “I just got two job offers for $19 an hour and I’m going to have to take one of them if you can’t match what they offered”. My friend then practically hounded one of his bosses, finally convinced him that in order to hire more people + retain their current staff, he has GOT to raise the starting wage to higher than $15 an hour and be competitive with retaining long term staff with substantive raises.
He told me with audible relief that his boss finally agreed with him and now they will be setting the starting wage higher than $15 an hour (again details still being hammered out) but it’s working guys!!!