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California’s unemployment rate dropped to 7.3% in September — the lowest in more than six years — though the total number of jobs declined by 9,800 last month, according to state data.

In the next decade, the state will have to fill a projected gap of more than 1.5 million skilled workers with “some college” experience. In a recent report issued by the Public Policy Institute of California titled, “California’s Need for Skilled Workers,” those workers are defined as people who have some post-secondary education, such as a vocational certificate, an Associate’s degree or who have attended some college, but not received their Bachelor’s, 

Economic activity in the Twelfth District continued to improve moderately during the reporting period of mid-August through late September. Overall price and wage inflation remained modest. Retail sales grew slightly, and demand for business and consumer services increased moderately. Overall manufacturing activity picked up, while agricultural conditions were mixed. Real estate activity advanced, but growth in the residential sector varied across the District. Loan demand increased moderately.

Although NOAA forecasters predicted a slightly wetter year for the Southland, the outlook remained dry for Central California, one of the state’s most parched regions. Most of the middle of the state would continue in what the NOAA classified as “exceptional drought.”

. . . California, once the exemplar of modernity, has among the worst road conditions in the nation, a tenuous, but still extraordinarily expensive, energy grid, as well as an increasingly uncompetitive port structure. Thinking itself a youthful magnet for building entrepreneurs of all kinds – creators of new communities, manufacturing and logistics industries – California is increasingly viewed by other places, both in the country and abroad, as an ideal place to hunt for skilled people, expanding industries and investment capital.

The average price of regular gasoline in the U.S. slid to the lowest level in more than 10 months, dropping 11.6 cents in the three weeks that ended Friday to $3.26 a gallon, according to a survey of gasoline retailers..

Los Angeles has long been the center of technology and innovation, with the nexus of its signature aerospace and entertainment industries inexorably shattering successive frontiers of knowledge and imagination.

While progress in the national and state economies has boosted confidence, optimism on the part of both consumers and businesses has been tempered by caution. Following a 3.0% increase in 2013, nonfarm jobs are expected to increase by 2.2% in both 2014 and in 2015. The unemployment rate will fall from 8.9% in 2013 to 7.5% this year and 7.0% in 2015. With continued improvement in the labor market, both personal income and total taxable sales should increase by four to five percent in each of the next two years.

The San Francisco Bay Area is in the midst of a strong recovery from the past decade’s economic downturn. However, the benefits of prosperity are not universally shared. In the Bay Area, more than 1.1 million workers — over a third of the total workforce — earn less than $18 per hour.

Los Angeles County will finally regain the number of jobs it lost during the Great Recession next year, with Orange County and the Inland Empire expected to follow soon after, a new study projects..

Better data from actual payroll records that the government collects as part of the unemployment insurance program suggest the average hotel worker is making almost 20% more than they are self reporting in the ACS data. And of course this fails to include the healthy tip income that many workers in the hospitality space earn, including waiters, valets, bellhops, and bartenders. In other words, clearly there are some low-income workers in the hotel field, but not nearly as many as the initial estimates the researchers would have you believe.

Though the region’s $94,572 median income is about 43 percent higher than the typical U.S. household, that eye-popping figure is skewed by a widening gap between high and low earners.

Her remarks added to a series of statements that began trickling out from the Capitol early this year and have intensified heading into the Nov. 4 elections. The issue, arising now in interviews, candidate questionnaires and debates, is likely to become a major point of controversy in Sacramento in the run-up to 2016.

Of the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan statistical areas, many of the top performers have strong tech economies, led by the No. 2 metro area on our list, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, aka Silicon Valley, where real per capita GDP expanded 11.5% from 2010-13. Perhaps more surprising is the strong, tech-fuelled performance of No. 3 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Ore., where real per capita GDP grew 9.2%. The prime contributor has been the robust performance of late of Intel, the state’s largest private employer, which employs about 17,000 in Portland’s western suburbs around the town of Hillsboro, the company’s largest concentration of workers anywhere. . . Per capita growth in the energy states has been even more impressive. Placing first on our big cities list is Houston-the Woodlands-Sugarland, Texas, where per capita GDP rose 13.2% from 2010-13, a major achievement in a region whose population continues to grow rapidly. Zooming out to all 381 U.S. MSAs, no places come close to the two Texas oil towns that rank first and second overall, Midland (sizzling 38.8% growth since 2010) and Odessa (34.1%).

Los Angeles County was home to 368,580 high-tech jobs in 2013, more than other regions that boast strong high-tech sectors, according to figures released Monday by Mayor Eric Garcetti and local economists.