A robust economy drove U.S. wages higher in August, new evidence that workers are gaining bargaining power with their employers as the nation’s pool of available labor becomes tighter in an expansion that appears to have gained steam in 2018. The Labor Department reported Friday that worker payrolls expanded by 201,000 in August and private-sector […]
U.S. construction companies are grappling with a widespread labor shortage that is exacerbating the cost of housing and other buildings, according to a new survey. Eighty percent of the 2,552 U.S. construction companies surveyed said they are having difficulty hiring construction workers, according to the Associated General Contractors of America and Autodesk, an engineering software […]
Labor Day is a chance to take a break from our routines and honor the contributions of those who have built America. But as we relax and reflect, we also ought to recognize that our celebrations may be short-lived: The U.S. is running out of workers. Baby boomers, who built the modern economic engine, are […]
8. California 5 yr. GDP annual growth rate: +2.9% (2nd largest increase) 2017 GDP: $2.4 trillion (the largest) June 2018 Unemployment: 4.2% (tied — 18th highest) 5 yr. annual employment growth: +2.2% (8th largest increase) California’s economy grew at an annual rate of 2.9% from 2012 through 2017, the second fastest pace of any state.
Just more than half of U.S. workers—51%—said they were satisfied with their jobs in 2017, the highest level since 2005, according to a new report from The Conference Board, a business-research group. Over the past seven years, Americans report feeling better about their pay along with a greater sense of job security, both features of […]
Fewer U.S. workers are moving around the country to seek new job opportunities, as changing family ties and more openings near home make people less willing to uproot their lives for work. About 3.5 million people relocated for a new job last year, according to U.S. census data, a 10% drop from 3.8 million in […]
And yet, despite all this, measured productivity growth across the developed economies has slowed. One possible explanation, recently considered by Andrew Haldane, chief economist of the Bank of England, is that while some companies rapidly grasp the new opportunities, others do so only slowly, producing a wide productivity dispersion even within the same sector. But […]
California will add two million jobs in the next decade, with the fastest job growth coming in sectors that require college degrees, according to new projections from the California Employment Development Department. The number of jobs that require at least an associate’s degree will grow by 810,000, or 12 percent, by 2026. By comparison, jobs […]
California is home to nearly two million residents who choose to work for themselves. As pillars of the workforce, these independent contractors are part of virtually every industry in the state including child care, healthcare, insurance, financial services, construction, technology and transportation. A recent California Supreme Court ruling, however, has called into question the ability […]
California payrolls grew by 46,700 jobs in July, a significant gain that came as the unemployment rate held at a record low of 4.2%, according to data released Friday by the state’s Employment Development Department. The positive numbers come as a relief: June’s initial report, which said employers added only 800 jobs to payrolls that […]
Increasingly we hear the idea there’s something wrong with wanting people to work. We hear welfare recipients shouldn’t be expected to work. We hear that requiring people to do work or activities in return for welfare is exploitation and wrong. That moving people from welfare to work is unfair because they’ll become part of the […]
Businesses that rely on the “gig economy” have been urging state lawmakers to overturn a California Supreme Court ruling that limits them from classifying workers as independent contractors. But legislative leaders declared that effort dead on Wednesday. In April, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a package and document delivery company called Dynamex had incorrectly […]
Leading gig-economy companies including Uber and Lyft are quietly lobbying California’s top Democrats to override or undermine a court ruling that could turn many of their contract workers into employees. In April, the California Supreme Court issued a far-reaching ruling that could make it much harder for companies to claim their workforces of independent contractors […]
Arrangements like Stanfield’s are looking more uncertain after a California Supreme Court ruling on independent contractors in April. That unanimous decision, adopting a new “ABC test” for defining employees, threw nearly three decades of legal precedent up in the air. It could take years, and plenty more litigation, to sort through all of the implications […]
Unfilled jobs are piling up in the transportation, retail and business-services sectors as workers become scarce in the fast-growing economy. The number of available jobs grew by nearly 750,000 this spring, compared with a year earlier, according to Labor Department data released Tuesday. There were 6.7 million job openings on average in the three months […]