$17 Minimum Wage? This City Council Will Vote On Creating Nation's Highest

A debate around how much to raise the minimum wage has been waged for years, especially as the cost of living climbs higher. Discussions have usually centered around how the minimum wage can be raised from $7.25 to $15 per hour, but one city council is set to vote on whether to raise that number even higher.

On Wednesday, the West Hollywood City Council will vote on a measure that would increase the minimum wage to $17.64. Local media previously reported that the council began preparing for this move last August by laying the groundwork for raising the minimum wage, but it was decided to move up the vote itself.

Under the West Hollywood minimum wage proposal, it would first be raised for hotel workers in the city by January 2022 before being raised for all workers by July of that year.

West Hollywood is an expensive place to live. According to RentCafe, the average rent in the city is estimated to be $3,172 as of August 2021. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau show the median household income was $74,044 in 2019.

The minimum wage in California is $13 and it is slated to rise to $15 by January 2023, according to the California Department of Industrial Relations. Despite being one of the highest state minimum wages in the country, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic last year and the displacement of millions of workers injected new life into conversations about raising the minimum wage.

The plan faces opposition. Business owners expressed concern that the bill would raise the cost of labor and put their recovery from the pandemic in jeopardy.

"We’re not saying that we don’t agree with reaching the objective of livable workforce wages. It’s just not the time to do it, and to do it so big,” Keith Kaplan of the Pandemic Recovery Coalition told KTLA on Monday. “The restaurants, the retailers, the hotels, they can’t survive it.”