Tesla Motors confirmed Wednesday that Nevada is a site finalist for a massive lithium ion battery factory it needs to support a ramped up production of its electric cars. According to Tesla’s blog, Nevada is competing against New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. Final site selection is underway as the states engage in a tax incentive bidding war for the plant. A decision could come anyday.
Cox Communications said Wednesday it is closing a call center in San Diego, eliminating 500 jobs. . . . Company spokesman Dennis Morgigno said the expanded call centers will be located in Las Vegas; Phoenix; Omaha, Neb.; Oklahoma City; Wichita, Kan.; Hampton Roads, Va.; and Baton Rouge.
The Palo Alto, Calif., company outlined plans for a factory that would employ up to 6,500 people and cover as many as 1,000 acres, including solar and wind farms to supply its power needs. It is evaluating sites in Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, Tesla said in a regulatory filing.
Dozens of Los Angeles film and television workers gathered at Los Angeles City Hall on Monday night to share somber stories of layoffs and diminishing job opportunities in the entertainment industry.
It’s been “disheartening as we have watched feature film work flee the city, and television production drop precipitously. Many people have dropped out altogether,” one source told us via our Public Insight Network. On Facebook, Rita Lilly wrote: “Finding work for a lot of nice, hard-working, middle-class people is becoming progressively harder.”
On Feb. 4, GenCorp said it would cut 5 percent of its nationwide workforce to gain efficiencies from the merger. At 5 percent, the cuts worked out to 225 employees across the country, and it turns out they are mostly in California.
Last week, the San Francisco Business Journal reported that Charles Schwab SCHW +0.34% is planning on moving “a significant number of San Francisco-based jobs” out of the state over the next three to five years. Charles Schwab’s San Francisco roots date back to its founding four decades ago, with the firm ranking as the 47th-largest employer in the Bay Area. The company employs almost 2,700 people in the region, and has a company-wide workforce of 13,600. Observers close to the situation blame the city’s extreme payroll tax and high cost of doing business in California as the reasons for the company’s exodus.
After nearly a century here, Westwood oil giant Occidental Petroleum Corp. is moving its headquarters to Houston.
About 16.8 million people moved into a different county within a year in the U.S., between 2007 and 2011, with the most common county-to-county moves being from Los Angeles to San Bernardino, Calif. (41,764 people) and Los Angeles to Orange, Calif. (an estimated 40,764), according to U. S. Census Bureau data released today.
An official for Gov. Jerry Brown’s Office of Business and Economic Development, or GO-Biz, confirmed Monday that California will submit a proposal to Boeing ahead of the company’s Tuesday deadline for states to submit proposals to host production of the 777X.
Southern California’s aerospace industry took another one on the chin when Boeing reached a tentative agreement with a machinists union to build the new 777X airliner in the Seattle area instead of at other possible sites, including Long Beach.
DC Comics will move its operations from New York City to the Warner Bros Studios lot in Burbank in 2015, according to media reports.
Our eighth annual Best States for Business ranking measures six vital categories for businesses: costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, current economic climate, growth prospects and quality of life. We factor in 35 points of data to determine the ranks across the six main areas.
Two state legislators said this week they will introduce motions next January to boost tax incentives for film and television production, one of a handful of bills addressing runaway production.
Virginia and North Dakota top the list of the best states to do business in 2013, according to Forbes’ annual study. At the bottom is Maine, which has been at No. 50 for four straight years. California is ranked No. 39. The best ranked states tend to have a wealth of incentives for companies and also economies that are recovering more robustly from the Great Recession. Now in its eighth year, the annual ranking takes into account factors such as labor, supply costs, the regulatory environment and growth prospects.