News

UCLA Anderson Forecast’s first quarterly report for the United States economy says that the nation “looks like an island of stability in a very volatile world.” The implication is that the U.S. is still on track for 3% GDP growth for the next two years, despite slow growth and currency devaluations throughout much of the rest of the developed world. Payroll employment is expected to increase at a 250,000-per-month pace and the national unemployment rate will hit 5% by year’s end. The California forecast is not much changed in the three months since the last release. Slightly weaker first and second quarters for 2015 are anticipated for California (when compared to the December report), which will be offset by stronger third and fourth quarters.

As difficult as it may be to face, the simple fact is that California is running out of water — and the problem started before our current drought. NASA data reveal that total water storage in California has been in steady decline since at least 2002, when satellite-based monitoring began, although groundwater depletion has been going on since the early 20th century.

The short-term economic impact of the recent labor standoff at West Coast ports will be small, according to a new economic forecast, but the ports face a long-term struggle to remain competitive in the rapidly changing realm of global trade..

The findings–to be released as soon as Wednesday–are likely to fuel business demands that Congress rewrite U.S. tax rules. Businesses want Congress to lower the U.S. corporate tax rate, now the highest among developed countries at 35%. They also want to loosen the U.S. system’s unusual global reach.

State education officials moved Wednesday to dramatically recast California’s system to evaluate school quality by suspending the use of standardized test scores as the major yardstick in favor of a broader array of measures.

California has achieved a great deal since 1970, including much cleaner air, water and more effective resource stewardship notwithstanding a population increase from approximately 19.9 million in 1970 to over 38 million by 2014. 2 Nevertheless, the state continues to face significant, and in many cases increasingly adverse educational and social equity challenges.

California’s population will continue to grow over the next 45 years, but very slowly, a new projection by the state’s demographers reveals, with Latinos and Asian-Americans providing virtually all growth and the white population shrinking dramatically.

How do taxes in your state compare nationally? This convenient pocket-size booklet compares the 50 states on many different measures of taxing and spending, including individual and corporate income tax rates, business tax climates, excise taxes, tax burdens and state spending.

The principal author of that legislation, Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, has introduced a new bill, SB 32, requiring greenhouse gases to be cut to 80 percent below the 1990 levels by 2050. The plan would come under the jurisdiction of the Air Resources Board.

The official estimate is that California will have 6.3 million job openings in the current decade, and the vast majority will not be newly created jobs but rather vacancies from baby boomer retirements.

California unemployment fell to 6.9 percent in January as the state’s economy generated 67,300 new payroll jobs, state officials said Friday.

The way Levine sees it, California is becoming a “barbell economy” with relatively heavy job growth in high- and low-wage occupations while the middle gets squeezed. . . Levine contends California has become too expensive for employers to hire middle-wage workers. A lot of the blame for those high costs, he said, can be placed on the state environmental laws and other regulations that make California a more expensive state for doing business.

The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that the goods and services deficit was $41.8 billion in January, down $3.8 billion from $45.6 billion in December, revised. January exports were $189.4 billion, down $5.6 billion from December. January imports were $231.2 billion, down $9.4 billion from December.

The labor force participation rate hovered between 62.9 percent and 62.7 percent in the eleven months from April 2014 through February, and has been 62.9 percent or lower in 13 of the 17 months since October 2013.

The trade deficit shrank to a seasonally adjusted $41.75 billion in January, the Commerce Department said Friday, as crude imports fell and created the lowest deficit for petroleum products in over a decade.