Seattle workers hail 'historic moment' as city sets course for $15 minimum wage Read more 
 
 The current minimum wage in California is $9 an hour and is set to increase to $10 in January 2016. Raising the wage in L.A., she said, will help spur similar increases in other parts of the country. Other cities, including New York and Chicago, are considering raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour. Once Los Angeles' wage hike is finalized, the city will join other West Coast cities that have enacted higher minimum wages in the last two years. In L.A., the move toward a higher citywide minimum wage gathered steam last year as council members pursued a plan to raise the base pay for workers at the city's large hotels to $15.37 per hour. “Every minimum wage increase that we’ve seen, if it’s too high, causes unemployment,” Parks told NPR in February.  “The effects here will be the biggest by far,” said Michael Reich, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was commissioned by city leaders to conduct several studies on the potential effects of a minimum-wage increase. He said in an interview on Tuesday that “we’re leading the country.” Credit Nick Ut/Associated Press 
 
 The groups pressing for higher minimum wages said that the Los Angeles vote could set off a wave of increases across Southern California, and that higher pay scales would improve the way of life for the region’s vast low-wage work force.
– The push for a higher minimum wage just got a major boost courtesy of Los Angeles. The city council has approved raising it to $15 an hour by 2020, reports the Los Angeles Times. Under the plan, the rate will rise from $9 to $10.50 in July 2016, then tick up annually to $12, $13.25, $14.25, and $15. Businesses with 25 or fewer workers will get an extra year to phase it in. Though a handful of other cities have voted for a $15 rate, including Seattle, Los Angeles is the biggest city to do so. The move doesn't become official until the city attorney's office drafts an ordinance and sends it back to council members for their approval, but once it does, it's going to affect a lot of people, notes the New York Times. The newspaper cites one study showing that about 40% of workers in the city make less than $15 an hour. The city's chamber of commerce predicts layoffs as a result. "It's simple math," says one official. "There is simply not enough room, enough margin in these businesses to absorb a 50-plus percent increase in labor costs over a short period of time." But one longtime McDonald's worker, a mother of two now making $9.05 an hour, tells the Guardian that the move is overdue. “My life would be completely different if I were paid $15 an hour," she says. "I could afford groceries without needing food stamps, my family could stop sharing our apartment with renters for extra money, and I’d be able to provide my daughters with some security.”