Roughly one in five black adults works for the government, teaching school, delivering mail, driving buses, processing criminal justice and managing large staffs. They are about 30 percent more likely to have a public sector job than non-Hispanic whites, and twice as likely as Hispanics.
KCBS-TV reports (http://cbsloc.al/1cU4CSN) hundreds of workers at the publication’s Southern California office were laid off on Friday after they met their weekly deadline.
Even as many farmers cut back their planting, California’s farm economy overall has been surprisingly resilient. Farm employment increased by more than 1 percent last year. Gross farm revenue from crop production actually increased by two-tenths of 1 percent last year, to $33.09 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The revenue figures don’t take into account animal agriculture, such as beef and dairy production.
Basic, common-sense protections like these are often assailed by business interests as job-killing overregulation. There’s practically a cottage industry of corporate groups whose job is to attack California laws that support workers’ rights and oppose any new worker protections. Despite these attacks, California has passed some of the strongest workers’ rights laws in the nation.
The California unemployment rate slid to 6.3% in April — its lowest level in seven years — and employers in the state added 29,500 nonfarm payroll jobs..
It found an “economic tale of two regions.” In Los Angeles, the base of private, non-farm jobs shrank between 1990 and 2013 before growing slightly last year, and came nowhere close to keeping up with population growth. In the Bay Area, growth rates in those jobs topped 20 percent.
But where it really gets interesting is the rankings measuring cities’ potential to be booming in 2024. And that’s where San Francisco comes out on top. Take that London, Boston and New York! (Nos. 2, 3 and 4.) And Beat L.A.? No problem. Those Dodgers lovers are at a mere No. 21.
Despite the drought, the number of workers employed in California’s agricultural industry rose to its highest level in at least 24 years, as many farmers shifted toward labor-intensive, permanent crops, according to the latest state and federal statistics.
“Today, many jobs that used to be considered non-tradable services are now tradable services. Back-office accounting functions can be done anywhere, as can legal research or title research. Just about any job that is done at a computer is now a tradable service. Unless they have a monopoly, tradable goods and tradable service providers face relentless price competition. California’s high-cost environment is forcing them to relocate to lower-cost communities to survive. Tradable producers won’t be providing 21st Century California jobs.”
As millions of California students tackle new assessments aligned with the Common Core, Gov. Jerry Brown in one of his more expansive comments on testing and measurements last week called for a “balanced” approach to testing, and expressed skepticism about pressures to hold schools more accountable for achieving results, and on students to show constant improvement.
Thwarted at the Capitol – and on the ballot – a coalition of advocates working to overhaul the state’s low-ranking public schools increasingly have turned to the courts in search of more favorable outcomes. Current cases center on the effect of tenure and dismissal rules on students and the fees teachers pay to their unions.
The agreement announced Thursday as part of Brown’s revised budget resolves a months-long standoff between Napolitano and the governor over the university’s finances that had California students and their families worried about the rising cost of a UC education. The deal, which still would allow the 10-campus system to increase tuition for non-residents and students pursuing professional degrees, must be approved by lawmakers.
Business leaders in Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, southern Alameda and northern Santa Cruz counties predict a hiring boom in 2015. Almost 64 percent of 217 companies surveyed plan on staffing more people this year, according to the annual CEO Business Climate Survey by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.
California, which has added 1.87 million jobs since its employment hit bottom in February, 2010, came in fifth at 13.18 percent, just below Colorado’s 13.45 percent.
The number of private sector jobs in the Los Angeles area has remained relatively flat over the past quarter century, while employment in the San Francisco Bay Area has boomed, a report by a business group shows.