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Occupational licensing requirements have a widespread and deep reach in California. The Golden State ranks 7th in the nation for licensing burden, with a total of 62 low-income occupations licensed and requiring an average of 549 days of education. These licenses have cast a wide net, with one out of every five Californian’s needing to receive permission to work from the government . By restrict entry into the market occupational licenses also result in lower job growth. Specifically, licensed industries experience up to 20% lower job growth than their unlicensed counterparts. This has prevented the creation of 3 million jobs nationally, according to a study from the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Occupational licenses also increase wages at the cost of consumers. While we can cheer hooray for those licensed workers who now enjoy 15% higher wages, the party is ruined for consumers who now fork out an additional $203 billion a year. In fact, the increase in consumer prices in licensed industries ranges from 5% to a whopping 33%.

Apple today has only one plant of its own—in Cork, Ireland. Its contract manufacturers operate two small U.S. plants, in Austin, Texas and Fremont, Calif. Those facilities have never grown beyond their narrow role making Apple’s Mac Pro computer, a niche product that sells for $3,000 or more.

. . . Apple last opened manufacturing facilities for computers in the 1990s with plants in Fountain, Colo. and Elk Grove, Calif. It shut down its last U.S. manufacturing line in 2004, laying off 235 full-time workers in Elk Grove.

In theory, the high-wage jobs of the technology industry could be filled by people working anywhere. But in practice, the best tech jobs in the U.S., offering salaries in excess of $100,000 a year, are becoming increasingly concentrated in the metropolitan areas of just eight cities, according to new research. The eight leading U.S. tech hubs account for slightly less than 10% of U.S. jobs and about 13% of overall job postings. But the cities — Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Austin, Raleigh, Washington, Baltimore and Boston — account for more than 27% of the listings for U.S. tech jobs, research from Jed Kolko, the chief economist of the job-search website Indeed, shows.

As if businesses were not troubled enough by substantial penalties tied to minor labor law infractions when private attorneys take on lawsuits under the Private Attorney General Act (PAGA), a California Supreme Court ruling has opened the door for more business burdens when confronting PAGA lawsuits. In a recent unanimous decision in Williams v. Marshalls the court ruled that plaintiffs attorneys have the right in discovery to examine all of a company’s employee records—whether employees worked at the site the alleged infraction took place or not. The plaintiff does not need to show good cause that the company had a statewide policy that violated labor laws before businesses are required to produce the information.

Drilling down, the paper found the law drove people to make different choices about work. “Middle-income individuals reduced their labor supply due to the additional tax on earnings while lower income individuals worked more in order to qualify for private insurance,” the authors wrote. “In the aggregate, these countervailing effects approximately balance” in terms of their impact on overall participation rates.

Here’s the good news: Los Angeles and Orange counties produced 45,968 college graduates to technology-related degrees between 2010 and 2015. Only two other markets — New York and Washington D.C. — produced more. L.A.-O.C. produced 33,080 new technology jobs between 2011 and 2016, seventh-best growth among big tech hubs behind San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle and D.C. Unfortunately, when you combine those two trends you see an ugly gap between the lofty level of local tech graduates and modest growth of L.A.-O.C. tech employment.

Today almost one-third of Americans need an occupational license to work legally, a number that has increased fivefold since the mid-20th century. Occupations requiring licenses range from practicing physicians to shampooers to fortune tellers. Uncle Sam appears to be taking notice. Maureen Ohlhaussen, acting chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has recently spearheaded an Economic Liberty Taskforce to address many of the issues caused by the current licensing landscape. . . .Because licensing is controlled by the states, requirements for licenses are not uniform or systematic. The Institute for Justice analyzed the occupations that require licenses and highlighted how they vary by state. For instance, a barber’s license requires almost two and a half years of education and training in Nevada, but only 175 days of training in Wyoming. Moreover, a barber from Nevada could not cut hair in any other state, including the less stringent Wyoming. Cities can further complicate matters by spawning unnecessary restrictions, such as New York City’s new ban on pet sitting without a kennel license. Another traditionally teen job is eliminated by the bureaucracy.

California’s economic engine quieted in June as employers reduced their payrolls by 1,400, according to a report Friday by the state’s Employment Development Department. It was the second month this year that the state lost jobs. The unemployment rate stayed flat at 4.7%, the lowest rate since November 2000.. . . A net reduction of 1,400 jobs is slight compared with the state’s total employment of about 17 million non-agricultural workers. But it is another indication that 2017 could be a year of cooling for California’s typically bustling job market.

Despite the air district’s efforts, the valley’s air still violates federal standards for sooty pollution that comes from industry, businesses and vehicles. In California, where Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown is an outspoken leader in the global fight against climate change, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District now is waging a very public campaign against enforcement of the landmark U.S. Clean Air Act that includes ever-tightening air quality standards the district says it cannot meet.

Now almost all of Wal-Mart’s 4,700 U.S. stores have a Cash360 machine, making thousands of positions obsolete. Most of the employees in those positions moved into store jobs to improve service, said a Wal-Mart spokesman. More than 500 have left the company. The store accountant displaced last August is now a greeter at the front door, where she still earns $13 an hour. “The role of service and customer-facing associates will always be there,” said Judith McKenna, Wal-Mart’s U.S. chief operating officer. But, she added, “there are interesting developments in technology that mean those roles shift and change over time.” Shopping is moving online, hourly wages are rising and retail profits are shrinking—a formula that pressures retailers, ranging from Wal-Mart to Tiffany & Co., to find technology that can do the rote labor of retail workers or replace them altogether.

China-based businesses have been sinking money into various automotive operations—from glass and tire makers to technology developers and car makers—for several years, reflecting Beijing’s goal of eventually dominating the world’s car business. That effort accelerated during the first half of 2017, with eight overseas deals totaling more than $5.5 billion in Chinese investments, compared with nine investments for all of last year. The list includes the takeover of troubled Japanese air-bag maker Takata Corp. , the purchase of a U.S. flying-car developer and the acquisition of a sizable stake in Silicon Valley’s Tesla Inc. TSLA 1.43% by games and social-media company Tencent Holdings Ltd.

Recent findings show that the proportion of high school seniors graduating with an A average — that includes an A-minus or A-plus — has grown sharply over the past generation, even as average SAT scores have fallen. In 1998, it was 38.9%. By last year, it had grown to 47%. That’s right: Nearly half of America’s Class of 2016 are A students. Meanwhile, their average SAT score fell from 1,026 to 1,002 on a 1,600-point scale — suggesting that those A’s on report cards might be fool’s gold.

The pace of motherhood in California is slowing and its members are aging, a shift demographers expect to continue and contribute to far-reaching and uncertain changes in the decades to come.

Last year, the state reached a historic milestone: the lowest birth rate on record — 12.4 births per thousand people. That rate was 12.3 for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties and a Southern California News Group analysis of state projections shows the region’s rate could fall another 24 percent by 2040.

When progressive journalists, including those in Texas, speak about the California model, they usually refer to the state’s economic performance since 2010, which has been well above the national average. Yet this may have been only an aberrant phenomenon. Since 2010, Texas’ job count has grown by 20.6 percent compared to 18.6 percent for California. If you pull the curtain even further, to 2000, however, the gap is even bigger, with employment growing 32.7 percent in Texas compared to 18 percent in California. The main problem is that California’s once remarkably varied and vital economy has become dangerously dependent on the Bay Area tech boom. Since 2010, the Silicon Valley-San Jose economy and San Francisco have been on a tear, growing their employment base by 25 percent. Job growth in the rest of the state has been a more modest 15 percent. “It’s not a California miracle, but really should be called a Silicon Valley miracle,” notes Chapman University forecaster Jim Doti. “The rest of the state really isn’t doing well.”

The stepped-in increase will raise rates by 9.25 percent now and then by another 9 percent in July 2018, which comes out to an increase of around $4.34 per month for the average household this summer and $4.64 monthly when the second raise takes place next July, according to EBMUD measures. EBMUD has said it needs more funds to replace aging infrastructure and other maintenance — and says around 10 percent of the money will go toward filling a projected $30 million gap created when customers conserved water during the drought.