Since February 2010, U.S. manufacturing employment has increased at a rate of 6.7%, with some Midwestern and Southern states such as Indiana and South Carolina seeing gains of 15% or more. By contrast, California manufacturing has grown at about 1% over the same period.
Jobs in the the solar sector have jumped 86% since 2010 and employment is expected to continue to rise in 2015 and 2016, although an expiring tax credit may stunt growth, according to the report. . . About 62% of installation firms said they would lay off workers once the 30% federal investment tax credit expires and reverts to 10% in 2017.
Economic activity in the Twelfth District continued to improve moderately during the reporting period of mid-November through late December 2014. Overall price and wage inflation remained modest. Retail sales and demand for business and consumer services increased moderately. Overall manufacturing activity picked up, while agricultural conditions were mixed. Real estate activity advanced, mainly in the commercial construction sector. Lending activity was mixed.
In practice, Proposition 103 prevents insurers from offering time-sensitive rate adjustments that allow consumers to realize the benefits of competition. This out-of-date and clumsy initiative also inhibits companies from creating and offering new insurance products, as is necessary for transportation network companies such as Uber and Lyft.
U.S. employers advertised the most job openings in nearly 14 years in November, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That suggests businesses are determined to keep adding staff because they are confident strong economic growth will create more demand for their goods and services.
The earnings gap between people with a college degree and those with no education beyond high school has been growing since the late 1970s. Since 2000, however, the gap has grown more for those who have earned a post-graduate degree as well. The divergence between workers with college degrees and those with graduate degrees may be one manifestation of rising labor market polarization, which benefits those earning the highest and the lowest wages relatively more than those in the middle of the wage distribution.
In reality, however, California’s path back remains slow and treacherous. California Lutheran University economist Bill Watkins, like other economists, is somewhat bullish on the state’s short-run situation, but suggests that the highly unequal recovery, particularly for the middle class, could prove problematic over time.
Employees who while on call are required to stay at a worksite should be compensated for all their hours, including sleep time, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday.
But unemployment hasn’t fallen just because some people are getting jobs, and other people are retiring. It’s also fallen because some other people who we’d expect to be working have given up trying to. So-called “prime-age workers” between 25 and 54 years old—too old to be in school, for the most part, and too young to be retired—aren’t working or even looking for work as much as they were before the Great Recession.
The U.S. concluded its best year of job growth in 15 years as the unemployment rate fell to a postrecession low last month, signs of strength that mask continued challenges of stagnant wages and a stubbornly high number of Americans still on the sidelines.
Since the Great Recession, the Texas model – built around lower taxes, less-stringent regulation and pro-business politics – has been the clearly ascendant of the two, with growth seen along a broad array of industries, including construction, manufacturing and technology, as well as energy. This economic diversity helped the state emerge from the recession far earlier than the rest of the country, recovering its 2007 jobs level by 2011. (California barely crawled into positive territory on jobs this past year.) Texas contributed 23 percent of U.S. economic growth in 2012 and 22 percent in 2011. Without Texas’ growth in this decade, the country could well still be in recession. . . California’s “boom” has come later in the cycle than Texas’, and is far more narrowly based, depending largely on the social media bubble, stock gains among its many wealthy residents and a surge in prices of high-end, coastal real estate. From October 2007 to October 2014, California gained a net 162,000 jobs; Texas in the same period added more than 1.2 million. Surprisingly, notes economist Dan Hamilton, the California tech industry has added barely 10,000 net jobs since 2007.
In this information age, brains are supposed to be the most valued economic currency. For California, where the regulatory environment is more difficult for companies and people who make things, this is even more the case. Generally speaking, those areas that have the heaviest concentration of educated people generally do better than those who don’t.
The danger in focusing on the most superficial indices of economic health, such as the official unemployment rate, is that politicians will pat themselves on the back and not take the steps, such as regulatory reform, that would be needed for broader, sustainable recovery.
A more buoyant economy and tightening labor market were supposed to draw in those now sitting on the margins. But the probability of a worker re-entering the labor force continues to slump. Over the past three months, an average of 6.8% of those outside the labor force either found a job or began looking for one. That means people are entering the labor force at the lowest pace in records kept since 1990, down from more than 8% in 2010.
California’s unemployment rate decreased to 7.2 percent in November, and nonfarm payroll jobs increased by 90,100 during the month for a total gain of 1,529,500 jobs since the recovery began in February 2010, according to data released today by the California Employment Development Department (EDD) from two separate surveys.