News

California Life Sciences Association (CLSA), the trade association representing California’s life sciences industry, today released the 2019 California Life Sciences Industry Report, which shows that California’s life sciences sector directly employed 311,226 people, generated $178 billion in revenue, is projected to attract $7.6 billion in venture capital (VC) and received $3.9 billion in funding from the […]

“In 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced “energy poverty”—defined as energy expenditures exceeding 10 percent of household income. In certain California counties, the rate of energy poverty was as high as 15 percent of all households.”

It’s time to dust it off again because the Capitol seems to be infested with voodoo economics these days – logic- and fact-deficient assertions about the seemingly magical economic effects of politicians’ pet causes.

The state’s historic drought has hit the San Joaquin Valley hard, with farm losses in the billions, an increase in health issues and a decline in income, according to a Fresno State study released Thursday.

In their latest estimate of the four-year drought’s economic effects, professors at the university’s Center for Watershed Sciences said Tuesday the drought has reduced seasonal farm employment by 10,100 jobs this year. When indirect job losses are thrown in, including truck drivers, food processing workers and others partially dependent on farming, the impact on payrolls comes to 21,000.

Our short answer is this: while the drought is affecting many Californians and communities in different ways, we currently do not expect the drought to have a significant effect on statewide economic activity or state government revenues. A recent Wall Street Journal survey reportedly showed that the vast majority of economists agree that the economic effects of the drought will either be “too small to show up” in economic data or be “small but measurable in the data.”

CalPERS is about to raise pension contribution rates again, this time by more than 9 percent, a move that will cost state government and local school districts nearly $600 million.

Number of Trade Jobs: 4,700,000

Developers of an NFL stadium in Inglewood have promised hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity, but economists largely believe that the economic impact of sports stadiums is miniscule, KPCC reports. A 2003 analysis on Staples Center commissioned by the Los Angeles City Controller found that economic activity in Inglewood actually increased when the Lakers left town.

California farmers now must abide by the nation’s strictest rules for a widely used pesticide in a change designed to protect farmworkers and people who live and work near agricultural fields but is likely to raise prices on produce.

Starting Thursday, gasoline and diesel producers will be subject to the state’s cap-and-trade system, forcing them either to supply lower-carbon fuels — which are more expensive to produce — or to buy pollution permits for the greenhouse gases created when the conventional fuel they supply is burned. In the short term, at least, that will mean higher prices at the pump, starting almost immediately.

Already, the specter of California’s regulations are believed to be contributing to record prices for eggs. The average wholesale cost of a dozen large eggs hit a peak of $2 on Thanksgiving Day — doubling in price from the start of November before settling this week to about $1.40. It comes at a time when soaring meat prices are expected to help push U.S. egg consumption to its highest level in seven years.

Egg prices could jump by as much as 20 percent in California as a result of the the new rules, Dermot J. Hayes, an agribusiness professor at Iowa State University in Ames, told Bloomberg.

The mere anticipation of the change has already driven prices up by more than $0.25 over the past month in California. And that increase comes on the heels of what has already been a pretty unkind year for omelette prices across the country: wholesale egg prices are averaging nearly $2.30 per dozen, up almost 35 percent since the start of the 2014.

California’s beer industry provides a nation-leading 242,000 jobs, according to a new study released by the Beer Institute, the Washington, D.C.-based national trade association.

The California travel industry expanded for the fourth consecutive year following the 2007-2009 recession. In terms of both employment and real inflation-adjusted dollars, the California travel industry exceeded its pre-recession levels in 2013.