United States | News & Politics

Yup, that's often going to be a tradeoff when increasing a price floor (minimum wage) or when there is a labor shortage. In Oregon when the legislature passed the current minimum wage law, it anticipated that effect. The state's cost of living (COL) varies widely, with some parts of the state struggling more with COL and others more with unemployment. To alleviate that, there are tiered urban, semi-urban, and rural minimum wages based on the population density of each county.

Personally, I think the apps and self-service kiosks were going to happen anyway. It's just too tempting from a business perspective when you're putting in a sales computer system anyway. Versions of self-service restaurants like the automat have been around for over a hundred years. Now with computer systems able to handle orders from multiple sources (app, website, cashier, self-service POS, delivery service) it just kind of makes sense that businesses would want to minimize cashiers. And it's not like with grocery stores where the self checkout is kinda garbage.