Watershed moment for San Diego’s minimum wage in 2026. Which workers benefit the most.

It was just a couple of years ago that the minimum wage landscape in California reached a major milestone — fast-food workers would begin earning $20 an hour, a monumental boost in pay over the state’s then hourly rate of $16. It would set a new bar for service workers up and down the state.

That bar is changing yet again, but this time in San Diego, where later this year, a sizable share of the city’s lowest paid workers will be celebrating an even bigger watershed moment — the first phase of what will eventually be a $25-an-hour minimum wage reserved for thousands of tourism industry employees who work at hotels, amusement parks and event centers like Petco Park and Snapdragon Stadium.

While the citywide minimum wage will rise a modest 3% to $17.75 on the first day of the new year, it will easily be eclipsed six months later by a $19 hourly wage for hotel and theme park workers and $21.06 for those employed by event centers. By 2030, when the $25 hourly rate goes into effect for all hospitality workers covered by the new wage law, they will have seen their pay jump by as much as 40%.

Outside the city of San Diego, the new minimum wage in the county will rise to $16.90 an hour on Thursday, the same rate as what is mandated in the state.

San Diego businesses, chief among them hotels, are girding for significantly larger labor costs that they say could translate to higher charges for guests and a contraction in operating hours of bars and restaur...