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Greed, profligacy, tiny companies with outlandish valuations: it is not hard to detect echoes of the turn of the century, when the dotcom bubble burst spectacularly and America’s economy stumbled as a result. But to see history as about to repeat itself is to miss how deeply things have changed. Today’s technology businesses are selling services and products from which they already generate income, rather than just saying that one day they might. And the group of people doing the investing is much smaller now than it was then. The risks are on fewer shoulders.

The enormous, disruptive creativity of Silicon Valley is unlike anything since the genius of the great 19th-century inventors. Its triumph is to be celebrated. But the accumulation of so much wealth so fast comes with risks. The 1990s saw a financial bubble that ended in a spectacular bust. This time the danger is insularity. The geeks live in a bubble that seals off their empire from the world they are doing so much to change.

It’s a shame these programs operate so haphazardly because $5.6 billion, if spent effectively, could be a major factor in bolstering California’s middle class, which is shrinking rapidly, making us a two-tier society with the nation’s highest poverty rate.

The decline has been, if anything, more rapid in 59th place Los Angeles. This process began with the loss of more than 90,000 aerospace jobs since the end of the Cold War. Los Angeles’ industrial job count stands at 363,900 — still the largest in the nations but down sharply from 900,000 just a decade ago.

An important measure of layoffs hit its lowest mark since the Nixon administration, a sign of increasing momentum in the labor market and a possible hint at the extent of job growth for the full month of July.

Other cost cutting includes “streamlining the engineering organization, reducing the number of offices and increasing the mix of resources in lower-cost regions,” the company said. The cost savings are expected to be spread out over the next year or so.

Organized labor won an important victory Tuesday when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to increase the minimum wage to $15, but it now faces a more daunting political challenge: convincing other local governments to join the movement.

California’s jobless rate dropped back to 6.3 percent in June after seeing a slight increase in May.

China and its swooning stock market pose a growing risk to the global economy, say economists surveyed this month by The Wall Street Journal. But healthier U.S. consumer spending and a stronger housing market will provide enough domestic power to offset any drag coming from the world’s No. 2 economy.

The Labor Department issued new guidance Wednesday intended to help companies answer that increasingly fraught question. The issue has taken on greater urgency with the growth of sharing-economy firms such as Uber and TaskRabbit, which increasingly rely on independent workers, often for short-term projects.

Some state workers fired from their jobs could apply for another state position and not disclose their termination, under the terms of a bill that is now in the California state Senate.

In this report, the Institute for Applied Economics of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC) conducts a regional dependency study of the refinery industry, evaluating the ripple effect of a potential reduction of supply of refined petroleum products and byproducts in California.

U.S. workers’ wages and benefits may be picking up faster than previously thought.

In his State of the City address in April, Mayor Eric Garcetti highlighted Turf Terminators, saying the hundreds of jobs that the company created were “some of the thousands of new, green jobs that have bloomed since I became mayor.”

California refineries support 2.4 million jobs that depend on the petroleum-based products they produce but increasing regulatory demands are jeopardizing their ability to continue operations in the state, according to a report released this week.