If you are a crossing guard, bartender, parking attendant, car washer, manicurist or dishwasher, you may be in luck if President Barack Obama's minimum wage plan is enacted.
And if you're a ticket-taker, farmworker, housekeeper, meatcutter, gas station attendant or waitress, you could be just as happy.
In these jobs, a quarter of Orange County workers make less than $9 an hour – the level to which Obama proposed to lift the minimum wage in his State of the Union speech this week.
That amounts to more than 45,000 local workers, according to county-by-county estimates by California's Employment Development Department. Statewide, 1.5 million workers made less than $9 an hour last year.
However, what is a boon to employees could be a bane to some businesses. California's minimum wage is currently $8 an hour. If it is superseded by a higher federal wage, restaurants, hotels, beauty salons and other companies that rely on a low-wage labor could face higher costs.
"Every time they raise the minimum wage, it is bad for business and bad for employment," said Jim Walker, owner of The Bungalow, a restaurant in Corona del Mar.
Half of Walker's 30 workers earn less than $9 an hour, he said, including busboys, food servers and bartenders. He figures that Obama's plan would cost him as much as $5,000 a month, because he would also have to raise the wages of hostesses and cooks to maintain a differential.
To earn that $5,000, Walker, who is president of the Newport Beach Restaurant Association, said he would have to bring in another $50,000 in business, a difficult task. More likely, he said, "I would have to cut back on people's hours, but that jeopardizes service."
Obama's proposal would gradually raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25 to $9 an hour over the next three years, and adjust wages for inflation in subsequent years. Although 19 states, including California, have hiked state minimums above the current federal level, a $9 minimum would boost the wages of 15 million people nationwide, the White House said.
"It is our generation's task ... to reignite the true engine of America's economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class," Obama told Congress in proposing the raise. "Today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. .. A family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line.That's wrong."
Congressional Republicans signaled they will oppose the increase. "At a time when Americans are still asking the question, 'Where are the jobs?' why would we want to make it harder for small employers to hire people?" House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters.
Economists are divided over whether higher minimums help or hurt workers. "It doesn't affect the overall economy," said UCI economist David Neumark, "because the minimum wage is peanuts in the scheme of things. But studies show that a 10 percent minimum wage increase reduces employment by 1 to 2 percent. Maybe a McDonald's will do with one less cashier and people will wait longer."
Other studies, including those by UC Berkeley economist Michael Reich, have found that modest boosts in the minimum wage reduce poverty without measurably shrinking employment, and the result is less turnover and higher productivity.
Wallace Walrod, chief economic adviser at the Orange County Business Council, said the group does not oppose the $9 proposal outright. "As the economy recovers, it ought to be considered," he said. "But the timing doesn't seem right to us. It hits entry-level service jobs. California still has the third highest unemployment in the nation, at 9.8 percent."
At an intersection in Huntington Beach on Friday morning, crossing guard Karina Gallo scurried back and forth, guiding elderly pedestrians and children on bikes and skateboards. Gallo, a 41-year old mother of two, earned $8.25 an hour when she started six years ago, and now makes $9 an hour. She has a second job as a night-shift stocker at Target, where she makes $13.80 an hour.