Scant availability of skilled construction workers has hampered home construction at various times in the past few years of recovery. But the shortfall seems to have grown more acute of late, as new-home sales are up 21.2% so far this year from the same period last year and commercial construction has increased steadily.
And the picture is even worse for L.A. Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system, than it is for the state. Across California, 44% of students achieved targets for their grade in English, while 34% did so in math. In L.A. Unified, the figures were 33% and 25%.
Nonfarm job openings rose by 430,000 to 5.75 million in July, the highest level since December 2000, when data collection first began, according to the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, also known as Jolts. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected 5.29 million job openings.
Just over half of 11th graders (56 percent) who took the new tests are “ready or conditionally ready” for college in terms of English literacy, while just 29 percent meet those standards in math. For an economy that increasingly runs on tech and professional jobs that require strong math, science and communications skills, that’s not a good sign.
Most students in the Sacramento region and statewide failed to meet English or math standards under the more rigorous California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, which replaces the former STAR tests.
During the recession, the share of Americans with disabilities dropping out of the labor force increased. The same occurred with people younger than 65 who chose to retire. But the retiree figure returned to historical norms when the economy improved, while the figure for workers with disabilities continued to rise.
California’s workforce has undergone a number of large shifts over the last generation. The profile of who is working today differs in fundamental ways from more than three decades ago, and understanding these changes can inform how state policies could better promote the economic security of workers and their families. This “chartbook” highlights four key trends in how California’s workforce has changed and discusses what they mean for state policy.
Local employers say they plan to slow down their hiring and will likely lay off more people in the fourth quarter than earlier in the year. And they are also more cautious about hiring plans than their counterparts nationwide, according to a survey to be released Tuesday by Manpower Inc.
Arbitrary licensure requirements make it much more difficult for those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder – especially women and ethnic minorities – to climb up.
On this Labor Day, it would be fair to say that without public employees, California’s 16.3 percent unionization rate, a bit above the national average, would be more like Oklahoma’s 6 percent.
But in this state we’ve got a widely abused law called the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. And labor is one of its biggest abusers, contributing to California’s reputation as a lousy place to invest and do business.
U.S. employment growth slowed in August but the jobless rate fell to the lowest level since 2008, a mixed labor-market reading that leaves the Federal Reserve with a challenging decision on whether to raise short-term rates at its September meeting.
Millions of workers who dropped out of the job market during the last economic slump were supposed to jump back in once things turned around. But more than six years after the Great Recession ended, the missing millions are increasingly looking like they’re gone for good..
Upward wage pressures strengthened across the District. Hiring picked up in the information technology (IT) sector, and contacts reported robust across-the-board wage gains for workers in the Internet services and information security sectors. Wage pressures continued to mount in the construction sector with contacts from urban technology centers, such as the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle, reporting shortages of skilled labor and significant wage increases. A few contacts in the banking sector observed strong demand for talented employees and, due to vigorous competition, were unable to pass higher wages through to the prices charged for banking services. Hospitality sector contacts in some parts of the District expressed concerns that recent minimum wage increases may raise costs in their industry.
The state Department of Education will release initial results of “Smarter Balance” tests aligned with Common Core standards in English and math next week, and the results are widely expected to show huge shortfalls in what kids have learned.