California could lose up to 217,000 jobs in Congress cuts Medicaid, according to a policy brief by the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center.

For every $1 increase in the minimum wage, low-income households spend an additional $2,800 annually. According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, taxpayers also benefit because of significant declines in state and federal government expenditures for food stamps, school lunches, housing assistance, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance programs.

A new report by researchers at the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that California rides-hailing drivers earn a median wage of $5.79 an hour without tips and $7.63 with tips. Delivery workers’ pay was even less at $4.98 without tips and $11.43 with tips — well below the California minimum wage of $16 an hour.

Many of Sonoma County’s hiring challenges and strategies are echoed in the findings of a report published last month by the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Half a million undocumented immigrants in California are expected to be left out of the state’s Medi-Cal expansion this year. “The definition of low income for Medi-Cal purposes, is quite low, especially when you consider the cost of living in California,” Laurel Lucia said.

According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, more than two-thirds of California’s fast-food workers are adults aged 20 and older. Nearly 70% live in households with four or more people, and their wages contribute 40% of their family’s annual income. Two-thirds of California fast-food workers are women, 8 in 10 are workers of color, and 6 in 10 Are Latino.

One other local county has a living wage, and four other cities in the region have minimum-wage ordinances that differ from the state’s.

For decades, “we underfunded public services in California,” Rhee tells me. “It comes down to these very individual cases, but I think it ties into this larger issue of how we recruit, retain and compensate public employees.”

Recently, aggressive anti-union tactics have been employed by liberal-facing companies like REI and Starbucks, said Jane McAlevey, a union organizer, author and senior policy fellow at UC Berkeley.