AOL Co-Founder Steve Case has a great perspective on the country’s vast and varied startup universe. Now Chairman of Startup America and CEO of Revolution, a venture capital fund based in Washington, D.C., Case wrote a February blog post for the Wall Street Journal describing what he’s dubbed the “rise of the rest.”
A new report, “The Hidden STEM Economy,” reveals that a university degree is not required for 27.5 percent of all jobs in the San Jose area in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. The number is even higher — 36 percent — in San Francisco and the East Bay.
Southern California Edison says its closure of the troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will force the company to lay off 900 workers in the next few months.
California could use $44.5 billion to fix aging water systems over the next two decades, according to a federal survey that placed the state at the top of a national list of water infrastructure needs.
Southern California’s housing recovery surged last month as buyers scrambled for a short supply of homes.
California’s San Joaquin Valley is one of the richest agricultural regions in the world, with Fresno County farmers receiving a record $6.8 billion in revenues last year. But the region also consistently ranks among the nation’s most impoverished.
California’s enterprise zones have been a part of state government since the mid-1980s, but there is disagreement as to whether they have successfully attracted and retained businesses or merely shifted commercial activities from communities without zones to others where the program is in effect.
In January, Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote a piece dealing with the movement of a manufacturing firm out of California. He used the loss of the firm to lament the difficulties faced by the state’s manufacturers and the fact California lacks any industrial development policy. In March, the paper’s Sacramento columnist, George Skelton, wrote an article citing the difficulties being created for the state by misuse of the CEQA process. Key observers thus appear to be starting to understand that our state government, with Democrats now controlling every constitutional office and veto proof majorities in both houses, has done little to worry about California’s prosperity and the huge portion of its residents with high school or less educations. As the Chief Economist of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, I have had to worry about these facts as they directly affect the region about which we are concerned.
The headline numbers for the May jobs report are about what you would expect for a New Normal economy stuck in 2% growth mode: 175,000 net new jobs last month, the unemployment rate ticking up to 7.6%. No broad signs of acceleration; just the opposite, in fact. As Barclays bank points out, the three-month average increase in nonfarm payrolls through May is now 155,000 vs. a first-quarter average of 207,000. (And at May’s pace of job creation, it would take another 58 months to get back to 5% unemployment.)
Businesses across California could have access to state tax credits similar to those previously limited to economically challenged areas, under a plan by Gov. Jerry Brown. The governor unveiled the proposal in May as part of his 2014 budget revise.
On Thursday, Mother Jones collected three jarring snapshots of Silicon Valley’s much-discussed (but largely under-studied) disparities between individuals of different genders and races.
Bracy’s talk featured some eye-popping charts on Silicon Valley’s race and gender divide.
The number of people filing new jobless claims across the country dropped by 11,000 to 346,000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. California saw the largest increase in new claims.
A broad swath of countries around the world are seizing on the continued absence of entrepreneur-friendly U.S. immigration reform to sell startups on setting up shop abroad.
A broad swath of countries around the world are seizing on the continued absence of entrepreneur-friendly U.S. immigration reform to sell startups on setting up shop abroad.