Did UC Berkeley just cut 500 jobs due to the $15 minimum wage?

Word spread quickly after the University at California at Berkeley announced they would cut 500 jobs over two years because of budget woes. Their Chancellor sent out an email to the staff last week calling the cuts “a modest reduction of 6 percent of our staff workforce.”

The campus is already in process of laying off 60 employees, and the timing of these additional costs come after California just voted to increase their minimum wage to $15 per hour. This led conservative media outlets to immediately tie the two together. It’s a perfect headline: America’s most liberal campus cuts jobs because of the minimum wage.

So, is Berkeley cutting 500 jobs because of the new minimum wage?

Not exactly, but there is no doubt that the new $15 minimum wage made the cuts bigger.

Berkeley’s financial woes started long before the minimum wage increase. Their campus is projecting a $150 million deficit this fiscal year alone, and they had a deficit of $109 million last year. The UC system is directing a $200 million bailout to them, but these cuts were long coming.