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While progress in the national and state economies has boosted confidence, optimism on the part of both consumers and businesses has been tempered by caution. Following a 3.0% increase in 2013, nonfarm jobs are expected to increase by 2.2% in both 2014 and in 2015. The unemployment rate will fall from 8.9% in 2013 to 7.5% this year and 7.0% in 2015. With continued improvement in the labor market, both personal income and total taxable sales should increase by four to five percent in each of the next two years.

The San Francisco Bay Area is in the midst of a strong recovery from the past decade’s economic downturn. However, the benefits of prosperity are not universally shared. In the Bay Area, more than 1.1 million workers — over a third of the total workforce — earn less than $18 per hour.

Los Angeles County will finally regain the number of jobs it lost during the Great Recession next year, with Orange County and the Inland Empire expected to follow soon after, a new study projects..

Though the region’s $94,572 median income is about 43 percent higher than the typical U.S. household, that eye-popping figure is skewed by a widening gap between high and low earners.

Of the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan statistical areas, many of the top performers have strong tech economies, led by the No. 2 metro area on our list, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, aka Silicon Valley, where real per capita GDP expanded 11.5% from 2010-13. Perhaps more surprising is the strong, tech-fuelled performance of No. 3 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Ore., where real per capita GDP grew 9.2%. The prime contributor has been the robust performance of late of Intel, the state’s largest private employer, which employs about 17,000 in Portland’s western suburbs around the town of Hillsboro, the company’s largest concentration of workers anywhere. . . Per capita growth in the energy states has been even more impressive. Placing first on our big cities list is Houston-the Woodlands-Sugarland, Texas, where per capita GDP rose 13.2% from 2010-13, a major achievement in a region whose population continues to grow rapidly. Zooming out to all 381 U.S. MSAs, no places come close to the two Texas oil towns that rank first and second overall, Midland (sizzling 38.8% growth since 2010) and Odessa (34.1%).

Los Angeles County was home to 368,580 high-tech jobs in 2013, more than other regions that boast strong high-tech sectors, according to figures released Monday by Mayor Eric Garcetti and local economists.

U.S. job growth rebounded in September and the jobless rate slipped below 6%, suggesting the labor market is improving faster than previously thought and raising the prospect of an earlier-than-anticipated move by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.

Nonfarm payrolls grew a seasonally adjusted 248,000 last month, the fastest pace since June, the Labor Department said Friday. Revisions showed stronger job growth in prior months than previously estimated. The economy added 180,000 jobs in August instead of the initially reported 142,000. It created 243,000 in July, up from an earlier estimate of 212,000.

. . . Despite the latest improvement, the report indicated slack remains in the labor market and pointed to persistent problems facing the world’s largest economy. The share of Americans in the labor force fell again last month, hitting the lowest level in more than three decades. The labor-force participation rate fell to 62.7% from August’s 62.8%. Before the recession, the rate stood at 66%.

In the next decade, the state will need nearly 450,000 more workers in all areas of healthcare – from lab technicians to dental hygienists to medical support positions, according to, “California’s Health Workforce Needs: Training Allied Workers,” a report released last week from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).

California’s unemployment rate was unchanged for a third month, holding at 7.4 percent in August, officials said Friday.

The economic recovery in California struggled through the first half of the year but now is picking up speed, driven by improvements in the real estate and the job markets, according to a quarterly report from Beacon Economics and City National Bank..

In the California forecast for September 2014, UCLA Anderson Senior Economist Jerry Nickelsburg writes, “The California economy is moving forward in an expansion from the depths of the Great Recession. But, even though the number of jobs is now higher than any time in the past, the state remains below its potential in output and employment. That we are entering the sixth year of expansion illustrates just how painfully plodding this recovery process has been.”  

Preliminary statistics from the BLS show that employment in those two industries has dropped to 298,000 in August — marking the first time in the past decade that the number has dropped below 300,000, and representing an 8% decline from 324,600 jobs in August 2013, and a 19% slide from 366,300 jobs in August 2012.

California earns a below average grade preparing its students to compete in a global economy, with only 23% of students proficient in reading and math compared with an international standard.

The third-quarter report, released Thursday, predicts that the state unemployment rate will sink to 5.7% by the end of 2016 from 7.4% now. That would continue to top the national rate, which UCLA economists expect will fall to 5.3% from its current 6.1%.

In 2013, exports of goods and services directly and indirectly supported an estimated 11.3 million U.S. jobs. Goods exports which consist of manufactured products, agricultural products, natural resources, and used/ second hand products supported 7.1 million jobs while the export of services accounted for the remaining 4.2 million jobs supported nationally.