01/10/2025

News

California’s Manufacturing and Benefits of Energy Efficiency

Next 10’s new report analyzes electricity productivity – how much GDP manufacturers produce for every dollar spent on electricity – and finds that California generates $59 in GDP for every dollar spent on electricity, compared to $38 for the rest of the nation, leading every other state except Connecticut.

Research & Studies
Read More

New US Private Sector Jobs Fall Short

Companies added 190,000 jobs to close out the summer, a number that was better than July’s downward-revised 177,000 and below the expected 201,000 new positions.

Read More

Dan Walters: Job Claims Clashing with Facts

It’s time to dust it off again because the Capitol seems to be infested with voodoo economics these days – logic- and fact-deficient assertions about the seemingly magical economic effects of politicians’ pet causes.

Slow website
Read More

Santa Clara County has Nation’s Strongest Job Market–By Far

The San Francisco-San Mateo area is even more dependent on high-tech for its economic expansion. During the same one-year-period in question, tech jobs accounted for 25,800 of the 41,700 total payroll jobs added in that region — 62 percent of the total.

Read More

In Strategy Shift, CalPERS Looks to Cut Financial Risk

California taxpayers have never paid more for public worker pensions, but it’s still not enough to cover the rising number of retirement checks written by the state’s largest pension plan..

Read More

As Common Core Results Trickle In, Initial Goals Unfulfilled

Results for some of the states that participated in Common Core-aligned testing for the first time this spring are out, with overall scores higher than expected though still below what many parents may be accustomed to seeing.

Slow website
Read More

Amid Criticism, State Officials Restore Past Years’ Test Data

The California Department of Education on Friday began restoring historical test data that it deleted from the most accessible part of its website earlier this month, following criticism that it did so to discourage the public from making comparisons to the results of new tests aligned to the Common Core standards.

Read More

Molycorp to Suspend Production at California Mine

Molycorp Inc., the only U.S. producer of rare earths, intends to mothball its mine in California, laying off almost 500 workers and suspending the country’s sole source of the 15 elements used in magnets, batteries and other high-tech products.

Site has paywall
Read More

Sacramento New Home Construction Slowed by Worker Shortages

But the massive industry shutdown seven years ago that sent workers scattering is having a residual effect. Builders are having a hard time bringing those workers back. They cite several reasons: Many of those laid-off workers retired during the recession or “aged out” of the more physically demanding trades. Some took up other jobs and are reluctant to re-enter the industry, fearful the bottom might fall out again. Still others are commuting to work in the Bay Area, where the home-construction market is hotter.

Slow website
Read More

Raising Graduation Bar Poses Challenge for School Districts

But like many of the other districts, Los Angeles Unified struggled to implement the new requirement. Officials said they miscalculated the large number of students who would have trouble with the college-prep coursework. The loss in state funding caused by the recession hampered other districts’ efforts to add intervention programs, making them reluctant to punish students who could not meet the tougher targets.

Read More

California Jobless Rate Falls to 6.2% in July; Employers Add 80,700 Jobs

The California unemployment rate fell to 6.2% in July — its lowest level in more than seven years — and employers added a robust 80,700 net new jobs.

Read More

Who Will Get the Dreary Economy Going?

It is the nature of recessions that the bigger they are, the bigger the comeback, yet the period since the Great Recession ended in 2009 has seen the weakest U.S. recovery since World War II. The little improvement we have seen hasn’t benefited a significant percentage of Americans. It is also the nature of recessions that they occur about every eight years; America is ill-prepared to weather the one on the horizon.

Site has paywall
Read More

What’s Killing Startups in 2015? Burn Rates, Lawsuits

According to CB Insights data, companies typically close within 20 months of their most recent rounds of financing, with 70 percent dying before raising $5 million. The majority, 55 percent, die before raising $1 million. The explanations for failure are tough to quantify — but the reasons that founders provide publicly serve as a window into common issues in the ecosystem.

Read More

Gov. Brown Signs Job Protections for Grocery Workers

Business groups opposed the bill, arguing that it would force a company to keep its predecessor’s employees and adhere to contracts that the new owner did not negotiate. The California Chamber of Commerce labeled the measure, AB 359, a “job killer.”

Read More

Minimum-Wage Waivers for Union Members Stir Standoff

In at least a half-dozen of those communities, the pay-floor ordinances include a provision allowing unions to waive the wage mandates as part of a collective-bargaining agreement.

Site has paywall
Read More