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Governor Tom Wolf signed a bill Monday, making it the ninth state to replace the pension with a “hybrid” retirement plan. It goes into effect in 2019.

The new plan combines elements of a traditional pension and a 401(k)-style account.

Overall, new workers will contribute more of their salary, work longer, and likely receive a smaller payout in retirement than under the current system, according to a report from the state’s Independent Fiscal Office.

But Pennsylvania’s pension system is currently one of the most underfunded in the country and is in need of reform. The bill had bipartisan support.

Southern California has experienced a boost in trade and logistics employment in the last decade, but policy and labor challenges lie ahead, according to a new economic report.

Trade-related jobs increased nearly 10% from 2005 to 2015, more than double the overall regional employment increase of 4.2%, the report released Monday by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. found.

. . . The average trade industry worker still made more than $63,000 in 2015, about 14% higher than the average wage for other industries in the area.

Defenders of California High-Speed Rail often respond to critics by touting how the project provides high-paying jobs in the construction industry for disadvantaged residents of the San Joaquin Valley. It’s one thing to proclaim intentions, but another to achieve them. . . .But these programs and jobs have restrictions. The California High-Speed Rail Authority and other regional and local governments have policies (such as a Project Labor Agreement, aka “Community Benefits Agreement”) to ensure construction unions get a monopoly on recruitment, training, and dispatch of workers to high-speed rail jobs. Allegedly this would provide job opportunities for disadvantaged residents who would otherwise remain in poverty. Public records just obtained from the Fresno-based State Center Community College District reveal that unions did not offer apprenticeship opportunities to most of the 69 people who completed a union-affiliated pre-apprenticeship program funded by a state grant. Performance results for this program suggest that unions are reserving high-speed rail jobs for more favored individuals. Ironically, a few workers ended up getting jobs from local non-union contractors.

Although the share of industrial jobs has shrunken from 10.5% of all nonfarm employment in 2005 to 8.5% today, manufacturing continues to have an outsized influence on regional economies, as is spelled out in the latest paper from the Center for Opportunity Urbanism. This stems in large part from the industrial sector’s productivity gains since 2001 — almost twice as much as the economy-wide average,  according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and it has a far higher multiplier effect (the boost it provides to local job and wealth creation) than virtually any other sector. Manufacturing generates $1.40 in economic activity for every dollar put in, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, far greater than the multiplier generated by business services, information, retail trade or finance.

Economists have long been puzzling over why productivity has downshifted over the past decade, often blaming waning technological innovation for the pullback. New research, though, points to an overlooked culprit: the shortage of credit to many companies that followed the financial crisis. . . Tight credit conditions and balance-sheet vulnerabilities could be responsible for as much as one-third of the productivity slowdown in advanced economies following the 2008 global financial crisis, according to an International Monetary Fund research paper by Gee Hee Hong, Romain Duval and Yannick Timmer. This slowdown has swept across nations like Japan, the U.S. and France.

LAEDC’s Institute for Applied Economics has released the report, Goods on the Move: Trade and Logistics in Southern California. The report looks at jobs, wages, economic impact, trends, and factors affecting the future of this major regional industry cluster, which directly employs over half a million people in Southern California. The industry continues to grow, with more jobs being added. While average wages for the industry as a whole are above the LA County average, the individual occupations span a wide range of salaries. Warehousing experienced a 55% increase in employment during the past ten years, but salaries in that sector have been trending down, and increasing automation is a factor to watch.

The new economy is not like the old economy. Once that settles in, there is an obvious strategy to pursue: overhauling our education system so it produces far more people with elite job skills. These skills often involve critical thinking and a facility with science and technology. Fields such as information technology, life sciences, cybersecurity, robotics, automation, artificial intelligence-assisted research and advanced statistical analysis are certain to grow in coming years.

Freshmen and seniors at about 200 colleges across the U.S. take a little-known test every year to measure how much better they get at learning to think. The results are discouraging.

At more than half of schools, at least a third of seniors were unable to make a cohesive argument, assess the quality of evidence in a document or interpret data in a table, The Wall Street Journal found after reviewing the latest results from dozens of public colleges and universities that gave the exam between 2013 and 2016. (See full results.)

At some of the most prestigious flagship universities, test results indicate the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years.

The report describes the economic impact of oil and gas industry operations in their entirety in the state of California. It estimates that the industry’s direct output of more than $111 billion generates more than $148  billion in direct economic activity, contributing 2.7 percent of the state’s GDP and supporting 368,100 total jobs in 2015, or 1.6 percent of California’s employment. Additionally, the oil and gas industry generates $26.4 billion in state and local tax revenues and $28.5 billion in sales and excise taxes. Vulnerable user industries of refined petroleum products, like transportation/warehousing, manufacturing and agriculture represent 1.7 million jobs in California with an associated $111 billion in labor income and account for 8.4 percent of the state’s GDP.

Chief executives of America’s largest companies say failure to pass sweeping tax-policy changes soon could damage hiring and investment.

But they remain optimistic for now about the prospects for tax reform and deregulation under the Trump administration, said members of the Business Roundtable, who released an updated outlook Tuesday.

Every manufacturing investment and job creation decision is made by company executives who are looking down the road at future costs, taxes, and regulations. Many states and countries want to attract manufacturing investments and jobs. If they have longstanding policies that will be in effect for ten or more years, they will beat out the locations with policies that expire in the short term. In fact, the larger and more important the investments, the more risk averse company executives will be; they will assume the expiration in existing law will occur, as promised.

Lawmakers may believe that California will nevertheless attract manufacturing jobs and investments even without the policies under discussion, but the data states otherwise. Since 2001 California has attracted less than 2 percent of US manufacturing new sites or expansions, far lower than the state’s share of manufacturing GDP. More recently the re-shoring surge shows a similar loss to the rest of the country, with under 2 percent of those jobs coming to California since 2013. That means manufacturing jobs and investments are now shifting to other locations under our noses and long-term policies to keep manufacturers here are crucial.

There are many important issues that the legislature will continue working on this summer, including a myriad of bills to address our housing crisis, an extension of Cap and Trade and an L.A. Area Chamber-sponsored bill that would create an Emergency Child Care Bridge Program for foster children. But as is the case every year, there are many bills that California just doesn’t need.

Fewer workers are moving to the Bay Area than in the past, further exacerbating the scarcity of skilled workers for in-demand fields. The total number of workers arriving in the Bay Area still exceeds the number of workers fleeing the region, but

The total number of workers arriving in the Bay Area still exceeds the number of workers fleeing the region, but net number of new arrivals has fallen 17 percent since February, according to June data out from LinkedIn. By comparison, Seattle saw a net migration increase by 2 percent over the same period.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 138,000 in May from the prior month, the Labor Department said Friday, and job gains in the prior two months were revised down. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, the lowest reading since May 2001. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected 184,000 new jobs to be added in May and a jobless rate of 4.4%. 

U.S. manufacturing activity expanded and hiring at factories picked up in May, signs of healthy growth for a key sector of the economy. The Institute for Supply Management on Thursday said its closely watched index of U.S. manufacturing activity inched ahead to 54.9 in May from 54.8 in April. A number above 50 indicates expansion. ISM manufacturing readings for each month this year have now been higher than any month in 2015 or 2016.