California’s birth rate fell to its lowest level in at least 100 years during 2017, even dipping below rates seen in the Great Depression, according to new figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 471,500 California babies were born in 2017, down by 17,000, or 3 percent, from 2016, according to […]
California added 39,300 net new jobs in April, as the unemployment rate fell from 4.3% to a new record low of 4.2%, according to data released Friday by the state Employment Development Department. The report indicates that the California economy remains robust despite some fears job growth was tapering off. April showed marked improvement compared […]
However, it’s just as important to keep the new economic rankings in perspective, to wit: —We’ve been there before. As the state Department of Finance points out, we were 5th in 2002, only to decline as the Great Recession struck a few years later, and we were in 10th place as recently as 2012. —While […]
The map above (click to enlarge) was created (with assistance from AEI’s graphic design director Olivier Ballou) by matching the economic output (Gross Domestic Product) for each US state (and the District of Columbia) in 2017 to a foreign country with a comparable nominal GDP last year, using data from the BEA for GDP by […]
As in the 1960s, California’s economy appears relatively buoyant. Yet the state’s post-recession resurgence has been greatly skewed to one region — the Bay Area — and benefited a relatively small group of people. The rest of the state largely has stagnated economically, with no appreciable income growth adjusted for costs. With weakness in higher-paying […]
Today in the Trump era, California remains a frontier, but increasingly one that appeals largely to progressives. “California,” recently suggested progressive journalists Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira, “today provides a model for America as a whole.” To them, California remains the “harbinger” of “new America” and “the most active front” in the battle to exterminate […]
In a ruling that could change the workplace status of people across the state, the California Supreme Court made it harder Monday for employers to classify their workers as independent contractors. The unanimous decision has implications for the growing gig economy, such as Uber, Lyft and other app-driven services — but it could extend to […]
After months of heated debate over whether companies would hand the biggest tax break in three decades back to shareholders or reinvest it in their businesses, there’s finally some hard data. Among the 130 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results in this earnings season, capital spending increased by 39 percent, the fastest […]
The Legislature’s dominant Democrats have bent over backwards to help unions organize workers in private and public employment, from those who work in the state’s agricultural fields to those who build electric cars for Tesla. And a substantial number of those legislators are former union members and organizers themselves. However, the Legislature’s own employees are […]
Automation will continue to have an impact on jobs across all industries, and the best way for companies, governments, and individuals to address the challenge, says economist Michael Spence, is for them to work together. In this interview, Spence explains that to reduce the fear and anxiety associated with the specter of jobs going away, […]
Job-grabbing robots are no longer science fiction. In 2013 Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne of Oxford University used—what else?—a machine-learning algorithm to assess how easily 702 different kinds of job in America could be automated. They concluded that fully 47% could be done by machines “over the next decade or two”. A new working […]
Even with apartment rents near record highs, rising construction costs and city fees are slowing down housing development around the Bay Area. In San Francisco, 4,500 new units were completed in 2017, down 14 percent for the year. Completions are expected to fall further based on the pipeline. . . . Developers are grappling with […]
Los Angeles County will see moderate job growth of just over 1 percent for the rest of this year, but the median home price will rise as much as 10 percent. . . . The forecast notes that nonfarm employment in Los Angeles County increased by 1.4 percent between February 2017 and February 2018, a […]
Qualcomm Inc. is slashing at least 1,500 jobs in California, trying to cut costs, at the same time its $44-billion bid to acquire NXP Semiconductors is running into problems getting antitrust clearance from China. The San Diego company, a leading provider of chips for mobile phones, said the layoffs included permanent and temporary workers. The […]
Economic activity in the Twelfth District continued to expand at a moderate pace during the reporting period of late February through early April. Conditions in the labor market remained tight, and upward wage pressures persisted. Price inflation increased modestly. Sales of retail goods were down slightly, while growth in consumer and business services remained solid. […]