Opinion | D.C.’s anti-tip experiment serves up another lesson on minimum wages (Washington Post editorial)
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# D.C.’s anti-tip experiment serves up another lesson on minimum wages (Washington Post editorial)
**Will advocates ever learn?**
In 2022, 74 percent of D.C. voters passed an initiative to raise the minimum wage for tipped service workers. The [D.C. Council paused](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/05/dc-tipped-minimum-wage-initiative-82-repeal/) that experiment last summer amid a spike in restaurant closures, and new data show that the policy shift has been successful.
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In the first half of 2026, an estimated [32 restaurants](https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2026/07/08/dc-restaurant-closings-ramw-shawn-townsend.html) closed, according to the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington. That’s a 43 percent reduction from the same period last year, when the pressure of mandated wage increases on restaurants reached its peak.
The data don’t necessarily prove that the drop in closures is the result of the council’s intervention. Many factors influence the restaurant industry, especially broader economic and consumer trends.
Yet 2026 has otherwise been a tough year for restaurants. Inflation has pushed up food prices. The Trump administration’s strict immigration policies have also tightened the labor market for food industry workers. It’s reasonable to assume that the council’s decision to loosen the wage mandate played a big role in keeping D.C. restaurants afloat.
The 2022 ballot initiative was sold as a way to guarantee service workers a “living wage.” The city began requiring businesses to increase the minimum wage for covered employees the following May, then set at $5.35. The plan was to periodically increase the amount until it reached D.C.’s standard minimum wage, which is currently $18.40 per hour.
The results were disastrous. Many owners [explicitly cited](https://wjla.com/news/local/dc-business-closures-initiative-82-tipped-paid-workers-money-sticky-rice-h-street-bar-owners-restaurant-freeze-repeal-minimum-wage-customers-frustration-pandemic-the-pub-food-costs-labor-traffic) rising wages as their primary reason for going out of business. Some servers also opposed the change because tips already brought their income above the standard minimum wage.
The council last year stopped short of fully repealing the initiative. Instead, it paused tipped wage hikes until July 1 of this year and devised a [slower schedule for increases](https://www.workforcebulletin.com/d-c-s-tipped-minimum-wage-appears-here-to-stay) over the next decade. Now the increases are scheduled to stop in 2034, when the tipped minimum wage will be 75 percent of the regular minimum wage. Restaurants might have an easier time adapting to that plan, but it will still have distorting effects.
Things could get much worse. Labor activists are working to add a measure to the D.C. ballot in November that would [raise the standard minimum wage to $25](https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2026/03/04/dc-minimum-wage-initiative.html) while also eliminating the lower minimum for tipped service workers.
When will advocates of minimum wage hikes learn that their policies have consequences other than the idealistic ones they desire? Democratic politicians across the country are embracing ever-more unfeasible minimum wage proposals.
D.C.’s experience, among many others, shows that they would wallop businesses and ultimately hurt workers. But voters seem to have an appetite for running this unhappy experiment on themselves over and over.