California: Minimum Wage

[00:00:00] Ugh, dieser komplexe Finanzierungstalk ist ganz schön anstrengend. Ob ich mein Depot jemals angelegt kriege?

[00:00:06] Aber du hast doch schon ein Depot.

[00:00:08] Äh, nee.

[00:00:09] Doch, du hast das Vodafone Gigadepot.

[00:00:11] Ha, stimmt! Und da habe ich ja selbst in der Hand, wie groß mein Depot ist.

[00:00:15] Jetzt mit dem Vodafone Gigadepot und verbrauchtes Datenvolumen in den nächsten Monat mitnehmen.

[00:00:19] Go on im zuverlässigen 5G-Netz von Vodafone. Vodafone. Together we can.

[00:00:25] Ich bin glücklich, dass ich meine Meinung habe. Wenn du in California bist, musst du in

[00:00:33] California suchen, deine Stadt zu finden, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um,

[00:00:53] um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um,

[00:00:54] wondering, yes, at some point we will split this off and there will be separate episodes,

[00:01:00] but sometimes it's, it just makes sense to do one. And this is one of those things we

[00:01:05] think you tell us, but before we get into all that, what's up, Walt?

[00:01:10] What's up? What's up with you, man? I'm good.

[00:01:12] What's up, William? Wait, it's Walter William.

[00:01:14] Yes, I never get it right.

[00:01:15] Yeah, Walter William III.

[00:01:18] William III.

[00:01:19] The third.

[00:01:22] Cause, cause I always get confused. Cause like,

[00:01:25] your name is Walter William, but then at one point you was like, no, I'm gonna go by William.

[00:01:29] And I'm like, all right. So I'm like, okay, that must be his first name. So William Walter,

[00:01:34] but it's really Walter William III, the Duncan III WD3. You know what I mean?

[00:01:40] Yup.

[00:01:42] What's good, man?

[00:01:44] Nothing much. I'm good, bro. Just grateful.

[00:01:46] Sending that gratitude again.

[00:01:48] Good, man.

[00:01:49] Hope it's ready to go. How about you, man?

[00:01:51] I'm doing the same. Doing the same, man. It's just, it's, it's definitely a season of change.

[00:01:56] It's transition.

[00:01:57] Yeah. It's definitely a season of transition. Who knows?

[00:02:00] Who knows? Who knows, guys?

[00:02:02] Okay.

[00:02:02] Sometimes life in general will have you speeches and just, hey, it is what it is.

[00:02:07] Yeah. So many.

[00:02:08] It's just, just the way it goes.

[00:02:09] My life for the last, almost a year now has been like, I think of Oprah saying you can have it all,

[00:02:15] but not all at once. So it's okay. It's things like folks, we, when we like share stuff is because

[00:02:26] we going through it, right? We are not at a point where we could look, we could give some people some

[00:02:31] advice because we are successful in our own right. But yeah, like we, I don't think we say it enough.

[00:02:37] We're not talking at folks. We're talking with y'all, right?

[00:02:43] We're relating.

[00:02:43] We're relating. We're, we're sharing our experiences and sharing our struggles.

[00:02:48] Current and past.

[00:02:50] Through payroll, through your paycheck, through these conversations.

[00:02:53] We just share, yep. Present, future, past. Who knows?

[00:02:56] Hmm.

[00:02:57] Yeah. So I don't want, I like, I don't, I, cause I don't want every folks right. Who do they think

[00:03:01] they are? Nobody really. We don't think we're not, we don't think we're anybody. We're Brian and Walt.

[00:03:05] That's who we think we are.

[00:03:06] We're older.

[00:03:07] And then with, hopefully with AI, we can be like minority report and predict

[00:03:11] hero problems.

[00:03:13] My son just, my, my son would just brought up something about

[00:03:18] there's some going at some rap artists because they accused them of, of, of using AI.

[00:03:22] But I was like, wait, did he use AI for his own voice? And apparently he may not have the facts

[00:03:28] right. But I was like, I don't think there's a problem with that.

[00:03:31] I was like, the problem is somebody taking our voices and trying to use it as their game.

[00:03:37] Yes.

[00:03:37] That's the problem. Taking other art, like how that Drake, who was it? Drake and somebody,

[00:03:42] Kendrick, they write that. I wonder if that sparked the beef. Did that spark the beef?

[00:03:47] I don't know what sparked the beef. I don't even know what sparked the beef, right? Who cares?

[00:03:50] They just got record sales and record streams and all that. As long as they don't take it to real

[00:03:54] life, rap beef is cool. Rap battling is part of the culture. Just don't make it Biggie Tupac thing

[00:04:02] where it got real and we lost two of the greatest MCs, two of the greatest hip hop artists that will

[00:04:07] ever be. That was senseless. That was unnecessary. You know what I mean? Oh my God.

[00:04:12] Speaking of hip hop, by the way, if we were talking real quick, I just saw a piece by piece.

[00:04:18] It's a Lego movie, but it's Pharrell Williams documentary.

[00:04:24] Oh, wow. Yep. That's cool.

[00:04:27] It's go see it with wifey. You will love it. I think you will love it. I think you will absolutely

[00:04:34] enjoy it. I saw, I took the kit. Like I was the one that prompted it cause I saw the preview for it

[00:04:39] and I was like, oh, I want to see this. I'm the one. I haven't seen a trailer or anything.

[00:04:45] Cause you know what it is? I'm being kids movies. So I saw the trailer at one of the other kids

[00:04:50] movies that we went to see. And I was like, oh, mark that on the calendar. We're going to see that.

[00:04:54] Sure enough. Oh, yes. Okay. I'm gonna check that out. Mad underrated. It's not,

[00:04:58] it's definitely not getting the love that it should be getting as a Lego movie, as a hip hop movie.

[00:05:03] Cause it's everything's about diddy. Oh my God. You see all the distractions of things. Yeah,

[00:05:10] man, forget him, bro. Like who really who, and that's what my wife was saying. She's distractions,

[00:05:16] babe distractions. I was like, cause everything is diddy. Like all the feet, everything on the feed

[00:05:20] is come on. You know what I mean? Cause cause the part that is just cause we brought it up. We

[00:05:25] haven't talked about it on the show yet. The part that I would definitely not condone support in any

[00:05:32] way is any underage type of things. Right. I'm a father of daughters. Like I,

[00:05:37] if you were doing that as you deplorable, like you horrible, you deserve every minute in jail that,

[00:05:43] you know, even with males, but no matter who, no matter who, yeah. Oh God. No matter like that age

[00:05:49] thing is horrible. You know what I mean? Yeah. But his sexuality, if it's just a matter of his

[00:05:55] sexuality, then yeah. Hey, clearly he was in the closet. I think is what they're saying. I haven't gotten

[00:06:00] dug into any of it. I'm just, it's nonsense to me other than the illegal, illegal activity.

[00:06:07] He needs to go. And he clear. And if he's in jail, clearly they had enough to put them away.

[00:06:11] You know what I mean? Yeah. You gotta pay your time kid. Sorry. You were a predator just like

[00:06:16] Hollywood and how they talk about the casting couch and all the horrible things that people in power do.

[00:06:23] You know what I mean? I think it's karma. I think, Hey, you do the crime. You gotta do the time.

[00:06:27] Maybe karma comes back to you one way or another. And that's what it is. I agree, man.

[00:06:32] And Matt, look, we're going to segue. Yes. We were talking about, you mentioned Tupac. So today's

[00:06:37] topic is going to be about California. We don't have a producer folks. So we're all like,

[00:06:46] we're going to have to start throwing our old sound bites and exactly.

[00:06:56] You know what I mean? Going back to Cali.

[00:07:00] People would love that. Yeah. Oh gosh. There's so many. Anywho. Yes. We are talking about

[00:07:05] California minimum wage today. We're getting in and just give you, give employees enough to be armed

[00:07:12] and dangerous. It's savvy with information. We want to empower y'all with information and resources

[00:07:19] and the tools and the savviness to go out there, find more information, do the research in the right

[00:07:24] spots, go look at the right things. Right. You look this, the topics that we talk about are so,

[00:07:31] how can I say so big? There's so much information and everything that we only hope to give you enough to

[00:07:39] go get you fired up and research in the right places and learn the right things. We want to spark,

[00:07:44] we want to spark that interest. We want to spark that interest to be like, oh, what they say?

[00:07:48] Hold on. Let me go through my, on the phone every, anyway, right? We have the most powerful tool in

[00:07:53] the world in our hands. I get so frustrated in my kids when they ask me questions. Cause I'm like,

[00:07:58] you literally have a computer in your hand. You ain't even got a type. You could just ask Siri.

[00:08:04] Come on. You have magic in your hands. You got magic in your hands. Come on. What are you asking me for?

[00:08:08] Google it. Siri it. So anywho, we're going to get into Cali minimum wage. But before that,

[00:08:15] we have some pay news to help and to drop the little nuggets here and there. Cause we like

[00:08:21] current events. We like news. Stay informed. And of course, I don't know. I don't know what the

[00:08:26] word is, but as always we find the, the, this common ground sink in sink, even when we're not in

[00:08:33] sink. Cause Walt, we, we prep, but we don't talk about every moment and every article that we're

[00:08:38] going to go pull. So I, we both pulled fast food articles to have, that have to do with California.

[00:08:44] Mine is the, about the fast food minimum wage that happened in California in the last year.

[00:08:52] Employers were like up in arms because of this new minimum wage. How could this be? We're going to

[00:08:59] lose our business. It's going to kill the industry. Because they don't, they balked at having to pay

[00:09:07] their workers more money. Heaven forbid you have to pay them a fair wage. You know what I mean? But

[00:09:13] survey says that none of those things happen. So all these business owners said, oh, because the minimum

[00:09:19] wage is going to go up for fast food workers. I'm actually good. We're going to lose workers.

[00:09:23] We're going to lose business. Our business is going to die right now that may have happened for some

[00:09:28] businesses. It definitely did. It definitely did. Yep. It happened for some, but those are going to be

[00:09:33] businesses that are on the fringe of collapse anyway. You know what I mean? The pandemic got rid of

[00:09:38] those businesses that were just like on the fringe, right on the cusp of staying in business or going

[00:09:44] out of business. So that means you were about to, you were one thing away from going to business,

[00:09:49] going out of business anyway. And this just happened to be that thing, right? Look, I'm a student of

[00:09:55] business and I get seemingly cold about how it plays out because I just understand the business of

[00:10:01] it all. And I get there are people on the other side of, I get it, but it business is business. It's

[00:10:06] one of the first things we learned at business school was business ethics is an oxymoron.

[00:10:10] So it doesn't always click like morality and the thing like it should, but when you go by business,

[00:10:16] it's not always going to take care of the people. So anywho, there are some companies that had did

[00:10:22] go out of business because they couldn't afford to pay their people the $20. I think it was $20 an

[00:10:28] hour or something that it went up to in California just for fast food workers. Okay. But the opposite

[00:10:34] happened. They just added more jobs in the most recent survey, like they're up. So go

[00:10:40] fake. There you go. What's yours about, man? You know what you should know? You should know

[00:10:48] that you should know podcast. That's what you should know because then you'd be in the know

[00:10:53] on all things that are timely and topical. Subscribe to the, you should know podcast. Thanks.

[00:11:00] Mine is about something that happened at Taco Bell. Oh, my fave.

[00:11:04] So there was a franchisee who owned a couple of Taco Bells and subways in Northern California. Okay.

[00:11:10] What happened is that they cheated over 230 workers out of $4 million in the wages.

[00:11:16] What? Yeah.

[00:11:17] How? Did they say how?

[00:11:19] Yeah. So the scheme involved them paying their employees below the minimum wage,

[00:11:24] the nine overtime and making illegal deductions from meal breaks and cash shortages. Many of them

[00:11:30] didn't speak English. Is it were immigrants and they were threatened with the deportation

[00:11:36] or getting fired. They had illegal people working there too.

[00:11:40] Maybe on some visas, work visas. I don't know. I don't know everything, but look,

[00:11:45] they tried to, uh, yeah, the first, they also falsified payroll records. Oh my,

[00:11:51] but it was one worker. It was that one worker. What do we always say? You speaking up, right?

[00:11:56] You may be that one domino, right? That's right. That one worker stood up and reported it to their

[00:12:03] local workers rights center and it sparked an investigation and they found out that employees

[00:12:09] had been, were earning less than $5 an hour after deductions in California. Oh, that's, wait,

[00:12:17] wait, wait. There's one more thing that I really think is the shocker is the big twist here. So

[00:12:22] after their investigation, they found out that this person was tied to organized crime. Oh. And

[00:12:28] he and human trafficking. Oh. And so that some of the workers, because some of the workers had been

[00:12:33] trafficked into the U S and forced to work under the threat of violence. So by the end of 2020,

[00:12:40] the operators faced criminal charges and were ordered to pay millions in back wages. Yeah.

[00:12:46] Well, the articles are going to be in the show notes and stuff. I found that fascinating. Yeah.

[00:12:51] Yeah. And so on point on point with what we're talking about. Yeah. That's crazy, man. We keep

[00:12:56] finding this stuff. I swear to God, folks, we thought one day we were like, we're not going to find

[00:13:01] enough content in this arena. There's no way people are just going to continue to make, commit crimes.

[00:13:06] And commit these same, make their own crimes and do these same, no fraud. Wire fraud. No. Ghost

[00:13:12] employees. Cow. That temptation. It's the temptation. It comes back to that temptation to kill you every

[00:13:18] time. Oh man. Before we get into it, let's pay some bills here. Shout out to Time Track Go. All right.

[00:13:25] Time Track Go. Let's get it. All right. Are you tired of manual employee time tracking and error-prone

[00:13:32] payroll processes? Discover how Time Track Go can revolutionize your payroll and HR departments.

[00:13:38] That should be a word. The error-prone payroll process, say it five times fast.

[00:13:42] Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[00:13:43] No, this is fine, bro. What I thought about when I read it the first time, I was like,

[00:13:48] oh man, we could loosen it up a little bit. So we just did. And Time Track Go is having an upcoming

[00:13:55] webinar next Tuesday, October 29th at 2 p.m. Eastern to learn more about the file. What's up?

[00:14:02] Yeah. But by the time you hear this, it's going to be Tuesday. Oh, actually. Yes. When you hear this,

[00:14:06] it'll be like Tuesday, that Tuesday. Yeah. So get on it. They're having a webinar. Time Track Go.

[00:14:12] The link to register will be in the show notes and it's also in the post when we post it wherever,

[00:14:18] but it's also in the show notes. And so anywho, the webinar is going to cover a few different things.

[00:14:24] They're going to cover employee tracking for hourly and salary employees. They're going to cover

[00:14:29] streamlined payroll integration because it integrates with mostly, I think every system.

[00:14:36] They're going to talk about the powerful mobile app that they have also with geofencing capabilities.

[00:14:42] They're going to talk about accurate PTO tracking and time off requests, all which you can do in the

[00:14:48] Time Track Go system. They're going to use, they're going to talk about how you can use an ordinary

[00:14:52] tablet to do modern payroll, payroll employee time tracking. And last but not least, automatic

[00:15:00] holiday pay calculations, which we all know we need help with because sometimes it's manual and you don't

[00:15:06] want to have to do manual. We want to automate this stuff. You want to automate. You want to automate as

[00:15:10] much as you can. Shout out to Time Track Go. Yep. Again, this webinar is Tuesday, October 29th at 2 p.m.

[00:15:17] Eastern. The link is going to be in our show notes, or you can go visit time track co. Yep.

[00:15:23] Dot com and you can go on Facebook and LinkedIn to register as well. Let's go.

[00:15:30] All right. All right, folks. Now we are talking about the money, literally always the money,

[00:15:37] California minimum wage. And one of the things that like, that I wanted to share with about

[00:15:42] California minimum wage is its complexity by like, they get granular by city. So I'll start you off

[00:15:52] here. Here we go. On May, on, on May 1st. Well, I don't know why I say my first on January 1st,

[00:15:58] 2, 2024, the beginning of this year, California initiated instituted

[00:16:06] a minimum wage of no less than $16 per hour, regardless of the size of their employer. Whoa,

[00:16:13] that's big too. Holy cow. So let me point, let me, let's talk about that for a quick moment because

[00:16:19] employees may not get it. You don't, you don't pay attention to it when you're an employee. Some states

[00:16:25] break it, minimum wage down by the size of the employer. Meaning if you're that small mom and pop,

[00:16:32] you got four employees and blah, blah, blah. Hey, maybe you can stick to the federal minimum wage.

[00:16:38] Okay. But if you're a large employer or midsize employer, depending on how the state breaks it down,

[00:16:45] then you have to abide by certain rules. Callie said, it does not matter what size you are.

[00:16:53] $16 an hour minimum across the state since January 1st of 2024.

[00:17:00] So if you are in California and you work as a W2 employee, okay, let me qualify that. If you're a 1099

[00:17:09] contractor, you make your own rates. There are different things for 1099 contractors. This is not

[00:17:15] applied. This is a W2 employee anywhere in the state, any company in the state, as long as you're working

[00:17:23] legally, you are entitled to $16 per hour. Here's the catch that I was so excited to share. There are over 40

[00:17:34] variables in the state of California, meaning there are 40 locales, state, city, county that pay at different

[00:17:45] rates. Different minimum wage, different. Thank you. A different minimum wage. And for instance,

[00:17:53] let me see if I can go here real quick. I was just going to throw out a couple examples, right? For

[00:17:58] instance, in Berkeley County, it's $18.67 minimum wage. Yeah. In Cupertino, $17.75 minimum wage.

[00:18:10] Yeah. LA, $16.78. San Francisco's $18.07. I have $17.78 for LA.

[00:18:19] Hey, it's Bob Pulver, host of you podcast. Human-centric AI, AI-driven transformation,

[00:18:25] hiring for skills and potential, dynamic workforce ecosystems, responsible innovation. These are some

[00:18:31] of the themes my expert guests and I chat about, and we certainly geek out on the details. Nothing too

[00:18:36] technical. I hope you check it out. Oh, wow. Okay. See what I'm saying? But see, I'm glad you said that

[00:18:42] because that is really my point. If you're in California, you need to look up your city, your

[00:18:49] county's minimum wage to make sure you're good. And let's clarify even one, qualify even one step

[00:18:55] further. It's where you work, right? You may live in LA, but you work in Cupertino. That's probably not

[00:19:02] realistic. But you live in one and work in another. It's going to be where you work in that minimum

[00:19:07] wages, right? So you can't be like, oh my, the city I live in is more. Nope. The company is,

[00:19:13] that's where it's the minimum wage. Okay. So keep that in mind. If you're Cali and you're an employee

[00:19:20] in California, you can look up the minimum wage. And guess what? Berkeley.edu has an awesome breakdown.

[00:19:30] It will be in the show notes. County, city and county minimum wage ordinances.

[00:19:36] There are over 40 in California. Okay. It's not only the state, it's broken down by county and city.

[00:19:44] Yeah. Because previously with the minimum wage, I'm so glad you said that about the differences,

[00:19:49] right? Because they changed it historically. So I think 2022, this was the year before they changed it,

[00:19:54] because 2023 is when they made it level that no matter what size employer, you were going to be paid

[00:19:59] like 1550. But before that, there was a dollar difference. So if you worked in 2022, if you worked

[00:20:06] at an employer that had 25 employees or less, that was $14 an hour. If you had 26 or more,

[00:20:11] that was $15 an hour. Right? So you would have to know as the employee, but how many people do you

[00:20:18] have working here? And I'm only getting paid this much. That's a problem. Exactly right. Oh,

[00:20:23] that's a great call out too. Cause remember Tabitha Brown was on and she said she was paying

[00:20:26] at the time when she had her restaurant, she was paying her workers way up, like way above the

[00:20:32] minimum wage. Yep. And then kind of Cali caught up and started paying more as well. So yeah, no,

[00:20:40] and that's why that's, that was my whole point is it could be so different. Make sure you're looking

[00:20:45] at accurate information. Make sure the website that you use is, even though I called out Berkeley's

[00:20:52] website, you use that to double check it. Hey, Berkeley saying that Los Angeles is this,

[00:20:58] let me go look at Los Angeles city's government's website, minimum wage. That's where the truth,

[00:21:03] that's like the record of truth is the city's website, not another website. Shout out to Berkeley

[00:21:09] for doing this. Cause it's a dope and it looks very up to date, but you double check it, especially

[00:21:14] if you're trying to go to your employer and you're going to say, Hey, you're not paying me properly.

[00:21:18] You want to definitely reference something that they have to abide by as well.

[00:21:25] Yeah. And look for the employee, right? There's like an example that I gave earlier about Taco Bell,

[00:21:31] the franchisee that was a pain, it was a short pain, the immigrants and not the non citizen or immigrant

[00:21:38] employees. Even if you are an immigrant employee, you still have certain rights to be paid. Absolutely.

[00:21:44] So absolutely. Yeah. So just employees before I let you, before Walt shares the employer piece,

[00:21:50] I'll let you know as an employee, check your pay stubs, look at, look at your rates.

[00:21:55] And then Cali has a very strict, Oh, we should do that too. What has to be on a pay stub in Cali?

[00:22:01] Let's do that. And then, so one is check your pay stub. Two is report violations. If your employer,

[00:22:07] politely go to the employer. I would try, Hey, I would say, Hey, politely go to your employer first.

[00:22:12] And if they're not responding, report them. And then the last thing, stay informed about the wage

[00:22:19] increases in your, where you are. And it could be just as a matter of stay informed. People like, Hey,

[00:22:24] look it up every now and then, Hey, you know what? Let me check. It's been a while. Let me check the

[00:22:27] minimum wage. Make sure it didn't go up or not. That's it. And look, as the employer, you want to

[00:22:33] make sure that you're doing the same thing, right? Because this is a change that occurred, right?

[00:22:37] It used to be one way a couple of years ago, and now it's different. Like I alluded to,

[00:22:42] no matter what the employer size is, the state minimum wage is now $10 an hour as of January 1st,

[00:22:48] 2024. Right? So you want to make sure and do your research as the employer, just like the employee

[00:22:54] should do. You want to see what local jurisdiction you are in because they may enforce a higher local

[00:22:59] minimum wage and employers need to comply with that, right? You either comply or you fry. I love it.

[00:23:06] You know what the saying?

[00:23:07] Well, like fly or fry. Yeah.

[00:23:10] By 2025, California's minimum wage is expected to continue increasing based on inflation.

[00:23:17] Oh, dang.

[00:23:17] So that was, yeah, that was determined by California's department of finance, um, during their annual

[00:23:22] assessment. So you want to make sure that you're aware of this as an employer and account for any

[00:23:27] potential increases in your budgeting and your payroll processes. So what are those key

[00:23:33] considerations? Compliance, as I just said, comply or fry. That's where both state and local wages,

[00:23:39] right? I love it.

[00:23:40] I love it.

[00:23:40] Those laws.

[00:23:41] Yeah. And then wage compression, challenges that occur as wages rise, right? So you may need to adjust

[00:23:49] wages for higher paid employees to maintain equitable pay structures.

[00:23:53] I just learned about wage compression this past year, by the way.

[00:23:56] Me too. Me too.

[00:23:58] Me too. Me too.

[00:23:59] Me too.

[00:23:59] You want to conduct constant payroll audits. That's something you want to do anyway.

[00:24:03] Yes. If you're right.

[00:24:04] Yeah. If you're the employer, you're the payroll pro, there should be audits on your schedule.

[00:24:09] Yep.

[00:24:09] You want to make sure that whether you're in HR or payroll, somebody should be doing this audit

[00:24:14] to ensure that employees are being paid in accordance with the law. Right.

[00:24:18] And you want to anticipate any increased costs in overtime, right? And any other wage-based benefits

[00:24:26] that are tied to the minimum wage levels. Right? So these are all things that you want to make sure

[00:24:32] that you're addressing as the employer, right? And look, because if you're not doing right by the employees...

[00:24:41] Hey, everybody. I'm Lori Rudiman. What are you doing? Working? Nah. You're listening to a podcast about work,

[00:24:47] and that barely counts. So while you're at it, check out my show, Punk Rock HR, now on the Work Defined Network.

[00:24:54] We chat with smart people about work, power, politics, and money. Are we succeeding? Are we fixing work? Eh, probably not.

[00:25:01] Work still sucks, but tune in for some fun, a little nonsense, and a fresh take on how to fix work once and for all.

[00:25:10] Eventually, somebody's gonna... You're gonna get the right one there. When I say that, the right one's gonna show up,

[00:25:15] and they're gonna report everything. Yep. And you're gonna have to do it anyway. And you're gonna take a...

[00:25:19] Potentially, as a business, you may take a blow to your company's reputation, and people might not want to work for you

[00:25:25] or anything like that. Yep. And it may impact the business. So just do the right thing now. Yeah.

[00:25:29] Yeah. Karma's a mother-affer, man. Like, it'll come back to you for sure.

[00:25:33] Yep. It sure will. You know. Nice. All right. We're going.

[00:25:36] With that being said, we're gonna end it out with our safe talk question.

[00:25:42] Safe talk. Yep. And then, yeah. So is California's annual inflation-based minimum wage adjustment

[00:25:50] enough to ensure that employees can keep up with the state's high cost of living,

[00:25:54] or do we need a more proactive approach to wage increases? What do you think?

[00:25:59] Man, for me, look, I think California is already very employee-centric. So I think that their

[00:26:07] finance department of finance is taking that into account already. And they have to balance it out.

[00:26:12] They just can't go tilt one way. It's a fine line.

[00:26:15] Balance. You said it is a balance.

[00:26:16] Well, it's like on that balancing beam or the tightrope. You know what I'm saying? You have to

[00:26:21] balance it out and you have to be meticulous with it. And you have to do it in the right way.

[00:26:25] Yeah. Because you lean one way too far to the right, you might fall. It might cause something to

[00:26:31] break or something to go awry. Yep. You know what I'm saying? So I think that they're doing

[00:26:36] a good job. Agreed.

[00:26:38] And look, there's always, no matter what, there's no perfect process. There's no perfect system as of

[00:26:45] yet. Right? There's nothing perfect yet. Maybe AI will help us get closer to that perfection. But

[00:26:51] look, there's always going to be something that can be done better in a better way. And that's why I

[00:26:56] think that they're doing a good job. I don't know if anything could be done to be more proactive about

[00:27:02] that. What about you? No, I think that's the answer. Like I just looked up to see, oh, there are,

[00:27:10] okay. 15 states and the district of Columbia index their minimum wage to inflation, meaning that the

[00:27:17] minimum wage increases automatically each year based on the course of living. Okay. So there you go,

[00:27:24] California being one of them and there's 14 others that do it as well. So that's interesting. Why

[00:27:32] doesn't every state do it? You know what I mean? So look now, with that being said, the average cost of

[00:27:38] living in California in 2024, it's around $53,000 a year. Okay. So I know minimum wage, $16 an hour.

[00:27:50] That's about 33,000. Like, so it takes two. It got to be two people.

[00:27:57] Yeah. Yup. Yup. Exactly. So two people should be able to do it. Um, but yeah, I mean, I was out in Cali, uh,

[00:28:09] in the last few months as well. And same thing, I was talking to business owners and then they were like,

[00:28:14] man, uh, you know, I wish my, my people could buy homes and stuff like that, but like, it's so

[00:28:19] expensive. This area and that area is so expensive and, you know, it's, and that's the case a lot of

[00:28:26] places now, I think post pan, I think pandemic really messed it up. Although I am seeing like

[00:28:32] things tend to correct itself, but mandate back to work and they're changing the, the folks is like, um,

[00:28:41] you know, a lot, well, companies did it right away. Right. When they were like, oh, you want to,

[00:28:45] you moved without telling us great. We're going to adjust your salary to where you move to.

[00:28:50] Oh, it might work against them too. This is what I'm saying. People took a lot of liberties in

[00:28:55] pandemic. They were like, oh, I'm moving across the country. I work for remote now. Not even

[00:28:59] yeah. Not even thinking that, Hey, it might be a one day come back to the office. Yeah. There's a lot of

[00:29:05] auto correction for that, but look, I think they're doing the right thing. They, them and 14 other

[00:29:09] states are doing it right. Does it solve the problem? No. There's a part of me that believes

[00:29:14] that the American dream is built on always running for that carrot, right? The carrot or

[00:29:20] the stick. And you say we're constantly in the hamster wheel, huh? Yep. Yep. Yep. No matter what.

[00:29:26] No matter what. And there are folks that break out of it, but yeah, you know, can you do that when

[00:29:32] it's just financial freedom?

[00:29:36] Yeah. I heard that once you get a taste of that financial freedom, you never want to go back.

[00:29:40] I believe it. Yeah. I believe it. I believe it. That's it folks. Check us out for the next one.

[00:29:45] We're definitely going to do Cali paycheck rules. There are certain rules that folks should like,

[00:29:52] there are things that have to be on California pay stubs. Other states are not as strict. So let's

[00:29:59] definitely touch that, get that for the employees. Keep, keep in tune for that. And until the next time,

[00:30:04] we love you. We love you. Peace.

[00:30:07] Peace. Before we sign off, here are a couple of quick things. Don't forget to follow. It's about

[00:30:14] payroll on LinkedIn and it's about your paycheck on Facebook and tick tock. Thank you for being part of

[00:30:20] our payroll community. And thank you for being a part of this journey with us until the next time. Keep

[00:30:27] learning, keep growing and most importantly, keep going.