Daily Business Report: Monday, December 22
San Diego’s cost-of-living committee led big policy fights in 2025. The City Council is ending it.
By Andrew Keatts | Times of San Diego
A year after creating a special committee on cost-of-living, the San Diego City Council is shutting it down.
Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who chaired the committee, said he was content to let it die as the council had plenty of work to do completing policy initiatives that started there.
The committee took on some of the most high profile and divisive issues that the city considered last year, such as the successful effort to increase the minimum wage for tourism workers to $25 starting in July 2026.
California’s minimum wage is increasing in 2026 as Los Angeles debates $30 an hour
By Cayla Mihalovich | CalMatters
Californians will see the minimum wage increase to $16.90 per hour starting Jan. 1. The adjustment — a boost of 40 cents per hour — was calculated in August by the Department of Finance as part of its minimum wage annual review required by state law.
California has been raising its minimum wage over the past decade. Former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2016 signed a watershed law to increase minimum wage from $10.50 per hour to $15 per hour, plus annual adjustments for inflation.
The current rate of $16.50 per hour suggests that a minimum wage worker needs to work 98 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom rental at fair market rent in California, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
San Diego County’s population increases in fiscal year 2025
By City News Service | Times of San Diego
San Diego, the state’s second-most populous county, had a population of 3,336,081 persons in fiscal year 2025, an increase of 0.32% over 2024’s figures, according to data released Friday by the California Department of Finance.
The county’s population of 3,325,274 last year increased by 10,807 in 2025, data showed.
Overall, California’s population grew by about 19,200, or 0.05%, in the fiscal year, reaching 39,529,000 people, the department found.
