Los Angeles hotels have eliminated roughly 650 jobs since the city’s Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance took effect last September, and industry officials say the cuts are only getting started.
The Hotel Association of Los Angeles (HALA) commissioned a study finding that hotels have cut or expect to cut about 6% of their workforce in a short span. The law, signed by Mayor Karen Bass on May 27, 2025, raised hotel and LAX airport worker wages to $22.50 an hour in July 2025 and will push them to $30 an hour by July 2028. It is sometimes called the “Olympic Wage,” tied to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“The bottom line is the city of Los Angeles has forced a wage and benefits package on hotels that is utterly unaffordable at a time when Californians and Americans are laser focused on affordability,” HALA President Dr. Jackie Filla told Fox News Digital this week.
The jobs lost are concentrated in food and beverage, housekeeping, and parking positions, hitting the working-class employees the law was supposed to help. Filla said many of those workers would have moved into management through executive training programs that hotels are now scaling back.
“We are at the very beginning of the series of these increases and hundreds of hotel workers have already lost their jobs,” Filla said. “Even more are seeing their hours reduced. We’ve seen restaurant closures within hotels, parking is already getting more expensive, and improvements and the creation of new buildings altogether are being delayed or canceled.”
The HALA study found that 62% of hotels expect to cut staff hours in 2026, with three-quarters of those anticipating reductions of at least 10%. The impact also extends to subcontractors: two-thirds of third-party providers on hotel properties said they plan to raise prices, and one in five plan to cancel their hotel contracts entirely.
Filla called the layoffs “entirely policy-driven,” distinguishing them from broader market downturns.
“Unlike typical layoffs that are occurring in other industries right now, these job losses were entirely policy-driven, caused by the mayor and city council,” she said. “And what is especially troubling about this is it didn’t have to happen.”
She said hotels want to grow their workforce heading into the 2028 Olympics, not shed it, but the mandated cost increases make that impossible. She is urging city officials to amend the ordinance before the next round of increases hits.
Bass’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Originally reported by Fox News Digital.
