Los Angeles tried a version of this experiment and fired hotel workers at the fastest rate in a decade.
Now AOC, Bernie Sanders, and a coalition of 100 socialist organizations want to take that policy national.
And the states that would get destroyed first are the ones millions of Americans moved to specifically to escape the Left.
The $25 Mandate Would Triple Wages Overnight in Texas and Florida
The Living Wage for All Act – introduced in Congress by Sanders-and-AOC-backed progressives – would force every large employer in America to pay $25 per hour by 2031.
That sounds like a raise.
It's actually a pink slip for nearly five million workers.
The Employment Policies Institute ran the numbers using federal labor data.
The result: 4.9 million jobs eliminated, with Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee absorbing the hardest hits.
Here's why those states specifically.
Every one of them follows the federal $7.25 minimum wage – the same rate it's been since 2009.
Going from $7.25 to $25 isn't a raise.
https://twitter.com/stlouisfed/status/2089812602171908504?s=20
It's a 245% overnight spike in labor costs for every restaurant, hotel, retailer, and small business in the Sun Belt.
"When you're talking about doubling or tripling the minimum wage, you're talking about doubling and tripling labor costs for businesses in those areas," said Rebekah Paxton, research director at the Employment Policies Institute. "It means business owners are going to have to slash jobs and reduce the number of hours that folks are able to work."
Democrats Already Ran This Experiment in Los Angeles and Here Is What Happened
Los Angeles didn't wait for a federal mandate.
The city forced hotel workers' wages to $22.50 an hour as part of its pre-Olympics wage push.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data – analyzed by the Employment Policies Institute – showed Los Angeles County's hotel sector lost 1.7% of its workforce in December 2025 compared to the same period the year before.
The EPI called it the largest year-over-year hotel industry drop in a decade outside of COVID.
Eighty-eight percent of Los Angeles hotels had already laid off workers or cut hours before the full mandate even kicked in.
Hotel owners began replacing workers with robots and AI.
One prominent hotel company started trying to sell its Los Angeles properties entirely – and couldn't find buyers because nobody wanted to touch the city's wage policies.
The damage got so bad that the LA City Council – the same people who passed the mandate – voted 11 to 4 to delay the $30-per-hour target by two years just to stop the bleeding.
That's what happened at $22.50.
AOC and Bernie want $25 applied to every business in Texas, Florida, and Tennessee.
This Is a Deliberate Attack on the States That Beat the Left
Here's what makes this story different from every other minimum wage debate.
The Sun Belt states being targeted aren't random.
They're the states that won.
Texas added nearly half a million new residents from other states in just the past few years.
Florida absorbed hundreds of thousands more – many of them fleeing California and New York specifically because those states made business impossible.
Now AOC and Bernie want to export California's wage mandates to every corner of America – through a federal law that overrides every state's right to set its own labor policy.
More than a third of the projected five million job losses come from the restaurant and hospitality industry alone.
That's 1.2 million waitresses, bartenders, line cooks, and hotel housekeepers – real people with real jobs – eliminated so AOC can run for president in 2028 on a $25-an-hour soundbite.
The federal minimum wage has sat at $7.25 since 2009.
That's not because Congress forgot.
That's because the states most affected by federal mandates – Texas, Florida, Tennessee – have been making their own economic decisions and building economies that actually work.
The left's answer to their own failures in California and New York isn't to fix those states.
It's to make sure nobody else can compete – and the waitress in Lubbock who moved there from Los Angeles to get away from all of this is about to find out she can't run far enough.
Sources:
- Joshua Q. Nelson, "Federal $25 minimum wage mandate would destroy nearly 5M jobs, hit booming Sun Belt hardest: study," Fox News, August 19, 2026.
- Fox News Staff, "Sanders-AOC backed progressive debuts federal $25 minimum wage bill with coalition of 100+ organizations," Fox News, April 28, 2026.
- Fox News Staff, "LA hotels hit by largest job losses in a decade as 'Olympic Wage' mandates bite, data shows," Fox News, June 10, 2026.
- Fox News Staff, "AOC-backed $25 minimum wage plan sounds great – but at what cost?" Fox News, May 6, 2026.
- C. Jarrett Dieterle, "L.A. delays its $30 hotel 'Olympic wage' until after the Olympics," Reason, June 27, 2026.