Two leading experts on the “gig economy” now say their estimates of its impact were too high, skewed by spotty data and the recession of a decade ago. Alan Krueger of Princeton University and Lawrence Katz of Harvard sifted through new evidence to explain how, in a 2015 survey, they overestimated how people cobbling together […]
The United States has long been the only industrialized country not to offer paid leave to new parents. Instead of waiting for the federal government, the incoming governor of California intends to change that in a significant way for families in his state. He is expected to introduce a proposal to give families six months […]
Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal see a growing risk of recession in the U.S. Though few could identify a specific trigger—such as the business investment crunch that drove the economy down in 2001 or the housing crisis that caused a recession in 2007—economists pointed to a number of worries, including trade tensions with […]
The number of unfilled jobs in the U.S. fell in November to the lowest level since June, though openings still exceeded unemployed Americans. There were a seasonally adjusted 6.89 million job openings on the last business day of November, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That was down from a revised 7.13 million at the end […]
Mayors and governors of both parties tout German-style apprenticeships as an alternative pathway to employment, in the face of ballooning college tuition and the need for career options for noncollege graduates. Support for increasing hands-on training comes from all corners—Democrats and Republicans, business and labor, the Trump and the Obama administrations. German Chancellor Angela Merkel […]
The Trump administration is looking into ways to help workers, but experts say the retraining problem is hard to fix. The key program is Trade Adjustment Assistance, installed in the 1960s, which provides extended unemployment benefit payments and job training to workers who the government determines lost employment due to overseas competition. Multiple studies have […]
U.S. employers added jobs at a robust pace in December and wages posted their biggest full-year gain of the expansion, providing a strong new counterpoint to recent worries in financial markets that the economy is sputtering because of trade frictions and rising interest rates. Stock prices rose on the economic news, then jumped even higher […]
For older Americans, the last few years of work can be a vital chance to patch up thin savings or pay down debt to ease their way into retirement. Many aren’t getting that opportunity. . . . Even though the official unemployment rate is just 3% for older workers, the actual jobs environment is surprisingly […]
The entertainment industry, one of the city’s biggest and most capricious employers, counts a number of car dwellers like Noelle among its workforce. Though the precise figure is unknown, it’s a small but visible population. Of the 45 or so people hosted each night by Safe Parking L.A. — an organization that launched in 2016 […]
BART service to both San Francisco and Oakland international airports is taking a multimillion-dollar shellacking from ride-hailing companies. Compared with the high-water mark in 2013, BART estimates it has seen about a 10 percent drop in rides to and from SFO in the past year, resulting in a $4 million loss in fares. Oakland airport […]
What was the biggest local business story of the year? With a sigh, I vote for the state Supreme Court’s decision in April that basically outlawed the gig economy in California. I sigh because the ruling truly may disrupt the way business increasingly is being done today, especially here in the San Fernando Valley area. […]
The most obvious and most important victims of California’s chronic and still-growing housing shortage are the countless thousands of families that struggle to put affordable roofs over their heads. The shortage has driven prices skyward in a classic example of a supply-demand mismatch and housing costs are the largest single factor in California’s shameful status […]
California’s unemployment rate held steady at 4.1 percent in November. The state Employment Development Department said Friday that employers added 30,700 nonfarm payroll jobs last month. Nine industry sectors added jobs while two reported job losses. California’s unemployment rate was 4.5 percent in November 2017.
As I learned the hard way, these penalties can add up fast, easily reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars for a small company like ours (and millions for larger businesses). The end result is that employers have to enforce onerous labor regulations that often do not benefit employees, or risk getting sued. For instance, we […]
Almost half of U.S. chief financial officers believe a recession will strike the U.S. economy by the end of 2019, with the tight labor market and growing trade tensions driving economic jitters among corporate America. Additionally, more than 80% of U.S. CFOs think a recession will strike by the end of 2020, according to the […]