News

A former McDonald’s CEO warned that robots will take over staff jobs at the fast food empire – because it’s cheaper than employing humans.

Another way to think about what an 0.8 percent lower growth rate means is to consider that from the trough of the Great Recession in 2009 when real U.S. GDP had fallen to $14.335 trillion until the first quarter of this year when it was $16.492 trillion implies a growth rate of 2.02 percent annually. If the growth rate had actually been 2.82 percent, U.S. GDP now would $17.415 trillion, about $1 trillion more than it is. If growth had increased at 3.4 percent per year (the 1990s rate) since 2009, U.S. GDP would now be $18.115 trillion.

Compared to 25 years ago, the incomes of the wealthiest households and others are now further apart, and the region’s middle class is smaller. Much like the greater Bay Area and California as a whole, Silicon Valley is a far more unequal place than it used to be.

U.S. factories have seen better days. Slow global growth and a strong dollar are weighing on manufacturers’ international ambitions. But a solid U.S. job market and still-low interest rates are supporting factories focused on domestic customers. That divide, as the Journal reported Monday, is showing up throughout recent manufacturing reports.

Global industrial giants are struggling under the weight of a strong dollar, reeling commodity markets and weak demand in emerging and advanced economies alike, from Brazil to Europe to China. But domestically oriented U.S. manufacturers are faring better, with steadier business buoyed by the relatively brighter auto, housing and job markets.

But typically when people talk about the sharing economy or gig economy, they’re talking about platforms that allow people to rent out rooms in their homes, or use their cars to give people rides or deliver groceries. And for now, these are much less common. Only 15% of adults have used ride-hailing services, like those offered by Uber and Lyft. Only 6% have ever had their groceries delivered, and only 4% have hired someone online to perform errands and tasks. . . Three-quarters are not familiar with the term “sharing economy” and 89% are unfamiliar with the term “gig economy.”

All over the country, employers say they see a disturbing downside of tighter labor markets as they try to rebuild from the worst recession since the Depression: They are struggling to find workers who can pass a pre-employment drug test. . . But data suggest employers’ difficulties also reflect an increase in the use of drugs, especially marijuana — employers’ main gripe — and also heroin and other opioid drugs much in the news.

Nearly 402,000 California high school seniors received diplomas last year, raising the state’s graduation rate to 82.3 percent, up 1.3 percentage points from 2014’s class, state schools Supt. Tom Torlakson reported Tuesday.

The unemployment rate fell to 5.3 percent, down a tenth of a point from the month before, the Employment Development Department said. It was the lowest statewide unemployment rate since June 2007.

The share of young men who are jobless or incar- cerated has been rising. In 1980, 11 percent of young men were jobless or incarcerated; in 2014, 16 percent were (see the figure on page 3). Specifi- cally, 10 percent of young men were jobless in 1980, and 1 percent were incarcerated; those shares rose to 13 percent and 3 percent in 2014. . . Young men who are jobless or incarcerated can be expected to have lower lifetime earnings and less stable family lives, on average, than their counterparts who are employed or in school. In the short term, their lower earnings will reduce tax revenues and increase spending on income support programs, and the incarceration of those in federal prison imposes costs on the federal government. Farther in the future, they will probably earn less than they would have if they had gained more work experi- ence or education when young, resulting in a smaller economy and lower tax revenues.

Yet Canada, which has about one-tenth the population of the United States, still has a higher absolute number of people who undergo apprenticeships than the U.S., notes Lerman. In the U.S., there are barely more than 300,000 people in apprenticeships. “That is really a drop in the bucket compared to the U.K. or some of the E.U. countries,” says Colborn. “That is a function of our secondary-school system, which for the last 30 years has been almost entirely focused on putting people on a college trajectory.”

In February, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen nearly 15%, concerns grew that the U.S. economy was slipping into recession. Those fears have since subsided in financial markets, but most economists continue to see an elevated risk of the U.S. falling into a new recession within the next 12 months.

Yahoo’s 279 workers let go this year contributed to the 3,135 tech jobs lost in the four-county region of Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and San Francisco counties from January through April, as did the 50 workers axed at Toshiba America in Livermore and the 71 at Autodesk in San Francisco. In the first four months of last year, just 1,515 Bay Area tech workers were laid off, according to mandatory filings under California’s WARN Act. For that period in 2014, the region’s tech layoffs numbered 1,330.

In a report released this week, Washington, DC-based startup incubator 1776 named Boston as the No. 1 place to launch a startup in the US, with the San Francisco Bay Area ranked No. 2.

While speculation is mounting that they’re overheating, the tech boom is still creating jobs at a rapid pace in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, placing them atop our annual assessment of The Best Cities For Jobs for the third year in a row. A number of secondary tech centers are posting strong growth as well on the back of the boom, as well as spillover from Northern California as high prices push expanding companies and startups to locate elsewhere.