A Chick-fil-A pays $18 an hour to retain fast-food workers

By 2022, the minimum wage in California will rise to $15. But the owner of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Sacramento plans to go ahead and raise the wages of his employees now, offering a huge bump to $17 to $18 from the $12 to $13 he pays them now.

The sizable raise represents a possible new high water mark for fast-food workers, say restaurant industry analysts, at a time when competition for even unskilled labor is rising amid low unemployment, greater immigration scrutiny and fewer teenagers seeking to work in fast-food jobs. While analysts can’t say whether a $17 to $18 hourly wage is the highest in the country for front-line fastfood workers, it certainly appears to be among the higher ones, said David Henkes, a senior principal with Technomic, a restaurant research and consulting firm.

“We’re seeing a lot of operators that are in that $12 to $15 range, especially in higher price areas like California, but that’s sort of a new threshold,” he said. “In an era of 3.9 percent unemployment, restaurants — which typically are not seen as the most attractive of jobs — are struggling to not only fill jobs but then retain workers.”

The owner of the Chick-fil-A location in Sacramento, Eric Mason, told a reporter for the local ABC news affiliate KXTV that he would be raising his workers’ pay from $12 to $13 an hour to $17 or $18 an hour starting June 4, referring to the increase as a “living wage.” In California, the minimum wage is currently $11 for employers with 26 or more workers, and will go up $1 a year until 2022.

“As the owner, I’m looking at it big picture and long term,” Mason said in an interview with the local news station. “What that does for the business is provide consistency, someone that has relationships with our guests and it’s going to be building a longterm culture.”