San Diego Community College District Has a New Minimum Wage: $30 an Hour

It’s expensive to live in San Diego. That’s no surprise to anyone grappling with sky-high costs like rent, water and energy. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator, which estimates how much people have to make to survive in U.S. cities, a family of four with two working adults living in San Diego needs to bring in at least $30.58 an hour to get by.  

As of Jan. 1, that’s exactly what the minimum wage of the San Diego Community College District’s full-time employees became. 

The change is no small increase: SDCCD’s $22.13 minimum wage, already significantly higher than any other community college in the region, is shooting up eight dollars. That means it’s now $12 higher than at any other community college district in the county. 

The minimum wage of part-time or temporary employees increased as well, from $16.30 to $22.31, what MIT lists a single adult with no children needs in San Diego. The city of San Diego’s minimum wage is $16.85. 

John Jordan, a custodian at the district’s central office, moved to San Diego in 1998 from Ghana and spent three months in a homeless shelter while he got on his feet. During that time, he took classes at City College and later got a part-time job at the school. Eventually, he got married, had children and secured a full-time custodial job. 

Like many district employees, the minimum wage hike boosted Jordan’s pay. He said it has made a big difference, especially at a time when everything is so expensive. 

“I can send money home again, I can pay my rent, I can pay my child support and still have some more money in my pocket,” Jordan said. “I’m happy, it made me encouraged to do the job more,” he said. 

Minimum wage, and labor forces more broadly, are things newly minted Chancellor Greg Smith has been thinking about for almost two decades. He got his start at the U.S. Department of Labor investigating potential instances of employment discrimination at companies with federal contracts. 

But the ball really started rolling during an executive meeting last year. City College President Ricky Shabazz said he’d seen a Target commercial advertising a starting wage of $20 an hour and that he’d love to be able to offer all full-time employees $22 an hour.  

“We were having a lot of failed searches at our entry-level positions … and we had a number of employees who were making below $30,000 and didn’t know how they were going to pay their rent or how they were going to get their groceries.” Shabazz said. “We say we’re about equity and access to the middle class and here we had people who weren’t in the middle class working for our organization.”  

Shabazz applauded Smith for immediately understanding. The district ended up quietly implementing that change last year but with California’s impending increase of food service workers’ minimum wage to $20 an hour, Smith felt the new starting wage wasn’t competitive enough. So, he checked out MIT’s Living Wage Calculator to get an idea of exactly what his employees would need to make to get by in San Diego. 

“When I saw the number was $30.85 an hour, I thought ‘we might be able to figure this out,’” Smith said.  

Then, when California passed its 2023-24 state budget that included an 8.2 percent cost of living adjustment – which is when the government increases funding to keep up with inflation – for schools and community colleges, Smith sensed an opportunity. 

“The historically large (cost of living adjustment) was absolutely key in this. You don’t see that big of an increase in your base revenue ever in our system, so we felt like ‘okay, we have a unique moment in time. Let’s capitalize on it,’” Smith said. 

They did some calculations and found that the wage increases would cost about $1.5 million in the first year and less each year as existing employees already slated to move up the pay scale reached the new minimum wage. That was a cost they felt they could absorb, even if future cost of living adjustments aren’t as large, a virtual guarantee given the dicey state of California’s finances.  

Smith’s next step was to approach the district’s unions. To pull the wage increase off, they’d need to take some money off the top, meaning employees already paid more than the new minimum would have to make a sacrifice: take a smaller raise in order to give the lowest-paid employees a larger one. To his delight, they were game. 

Smith has a couple of goals with the wage increase. Firstly, he feels it’s an acknowledgment that San Diego is a damn expensive place to live.  

“The cost of living in San Diego has increased so much … and more and more of our employees are either relying on some public assistance to help them meet basic needs or having to move further and further away,” Smith said.  

The hope is the additional bucks will allow employees to live where they work, keep their heads above the rising financial water and help the district’s hiring and retention. But, as an institution that employs over 5,000 people throughout the county, Smith’s also hoping the district can act as a disruptor and encourage other employers, including other community colleges, to increase wages for their employees. It may even draw people working in private industry or city or county governments to the district.  

“Other players are going to say, ‘well, maybe we can’t do as much as they did, but we’re going to have to make progress towards it,’” he said. 

In conversations, some other employers expressed worry about what may happen to their own hiring efforts now that workers can make nearly double off the bat at another local district. Smith said he’s happy to walk through how they made the numbers work, but he also seems a little giddy at the thought the district is putting its shoulder into upward wage pressure. 

“I’m glad I’m stirring something up intentionally. ‘Sorry, not sorry,’ so to speak,” he laughed.