News

The growing skills gap is one of the most persistent challenges a”ecting thriving and lagging state economies—the disparity between the skills companies need to drive growth and innovation versus the skills that actually exist within their organizations and in the labor market. This disconnect, expected to grow substantially as the boomer generation retires, causes workers and companies to miss out on realizing their full potential. A sizable skills gap impacts virtually every aspect of the economy, thereby affecting our national competitiveness and, in turn, causing the economy to fall short of its potential.

In the Governor’s 2015-16 budget proposal, the administration raises its revenue estimates, and this results in a multibillion-dollar influx of new funds for schools and community colleges under the Proposition 98 minimum funding guarantee. The Governor’s plan identifies cost pressures and budget risks in health and human services programs, and new program commitments outside of Proposition 98 are limited. The Governor’s proposal to pay off the state’s retiree health liabilities over the next few decades would, if funded, address the last of state government’s large unaddressed liabilities. We conclude the state likely will collect more tax revenue in 2014-15 than the administration now estimates. Barring a sustained stock market drop, an additional 2014-15 revenue gain of $1 billion to $2 billion seems likely in addition to the Governor’s budget projection. Even bigger gains of a few billion dollars more are possible in 2014-15. These additional 2014-15 revenues will go largely or entirely to schools and community colleges and could result in a few billion dollars of higher ongoing state payments to schools. Whether tax revenues grow further, stagnate, or, in the worst case, decline in 2015-16 will depend in large part on trends in volatile capital gains and business income.

A study by the National Retail Federation and the National Association of Manufacturers estimates that a 10-day shutdown would cost the nation’s economy nearly $2 billion a day and “could be catastrophic” for retailers, manufacturers, farmers and other industries across the economy that rely on the ports for both imports and exports.

An upswing in the U.S. economy has contributed to a surge in economic optimism but provided no similar improvement in the standing of the nation’s political leaders, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows.

The U.S. has its own tradition of apprenticeship going back many years. But like most kinds of vocational education, it fell out of fashion in recent decades—a victim of our obsession with college and concern to avoid anything that resembles tracking. Today in America, fewer than 5 percent of young people train as apprentices, the overwhelming majority in the construction trades. In Germany, the number is closer to 60 percent—in fields as diverse as advanced manufacturing, IT, banking, and hospitality. And in Europe, what’s often called “dual training” is a highly respected career path.

After about two decades of a typical curriculum in its middle school and high school, Boys Town is overhauling its class offerings to refocus on Father Flanagan’s original vision of vocational classes, which are increasingly in vogue. Now, they have a fancy new name: career-readiness courses.

Housing developers are pushing a state bond because, without it, their share of school construction costs — passed on to home buyers — would double. School construction has been funded one-third each by local property taxpayers, developers and the state.

Looking ahead, we should be spending at least $100 billion more on maintenance, repair and reconstruction over the next decade.

Published in 1961, Jacobs’ book exposed the flaws of that era’s urban-renewal programs. But she probably would never have imagined one of the more recent threats to old downtowns and to the oftentimes quirky small businesses that reside in historic buildings: disability lawsuits.

The income gap between African Americans and whites in California has reached its widest point in decades, a trend that reflects a broader, growing chasm between the state’s wealthy and poor, experts said.

We applaud the governor’s efforts to protect our environment and address climate change. But the proposed goals will not come cheaply, with additional costs pinching the wallet of every Californian. We feel the need to ask an important question: How do we get there without emptying our pocketbooks and further burdening millions already living in poverty?

Data released today by the BLS indicates that the electricity price indexes hit all-time highs for the month of December and for the year. 2014 was the most-expensive year ever for electricity in the United States.

U.S. consumers are seeing prices rise at the slowest annual pace in more than five years, largely thanks to a global plunge in oil prices, presenting a potential complication for the Federal Reserve as it looks to raise interest rates this year.

The Port of Oakland has reached an all-time high in cargo volume last year, and that’s largely because the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles diverted some of their cargo north, the Sacramento Bee reports. In December, the Southern California ports rerouted a total of 74,356 containers to Oakland.

California is overtaking Brazil as the world’s seventh-largest economy, bolstered by rising employment, home values and personal and corporate income, a year after the most-populous state surpassed Russia and Italy.