As predicted, the $15 minimum wage is forcing city employers to cut staff, shorten or scrap shifts, hike prices, cancel expansion plans and even close locations.

The mandate took effect Jan. 1 for city businesses with 11 or more employees — and will hit even the smallest businesses come Dec. 31.

As The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, employers say they’re struggling to adjust to the whopping wage boost — up 66 percent since just 2016 — and making major shifts in plans.

That echoes a report by the New York City Hospitality Alliance last year, after wage hikes in 2017 and 2018, “full-service restaurants recorded a 1.6 percent job loss.” That was the “first recorded annual loss in two decades,” notes the group’s executive director, Andrew Rigie.

Yes, lefty and union-backed economists released a report last week claiming a local restaurant-jobs boom. But the city’s Independent Budget Office put the 2018 drop at 6,000 jobs, or about 3.4 percent.

Recall that the $15 mandate hit even as lawmakers also slapped employers with other burdens, such as paid sick and medical leave. The load just keeps getting heavier.

Yet the City Council seems clueless as to why so many businesses are now finding it hard to survive: Last month, it passed a number of bills to generate data to help better understand the problem.

Hello? If pols keep socking businesses with new costs and regulations, what do they think is going to happen?

Susannah Koteen, who owns the Lido Restaurant in Harlem, says she has cut back on shifts and overtime and raises her prices more frequently now. She also gave up on plans to move to a larger site.

Queens Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Grech specifically blames the $15 mandate for a spike in newly closed small businesses. Employers are “cutting their staff. They’re cutting their hours. They’re shutting down,” he says.

Yes, as Steve Cuozzo recently noted on these pages, online retailers have hurt brick-and-mortar shops. And some landlords have hiked rents, fueling vacancies.

But taxes, regulations and mandates like the minimum wage are among the worst culprits. And city and state lawmakers keep adding new burdens, always claiming owners can absorb the extra hit. Some, for instance, now want to ditch the state’s special, lower minimum wage for tipped workers (already recently pushed up to $10 an hour for food-service employers with more than 10 workers).

Hitting employers also hits their workers and customers — often worse than any “help” from a mandate: $15 an hour isn’t worth much if it also cuts your hours to zero.