News

Rocket engine manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne has chosen Huntsville, Ala., as its final assembly site for the new AR1 rocket engine, creating 100 new jobs in the area.

Upward of 60 restaurants around the Bay Area have closed since the start of September alone, with many citing difficulties like the cost of finding and keeping good employees, rising rents, new requirements for providing health care and sick leave, and doing it all while competing with the slew of new dining options.

Carpinteria-based CKE, which also owns St. Louis-based Hardee’s, is consolidating both offices in Tennessee, which will be home to 120 corporate employees. Of those, 54 are new hires, which was necessary as 51 employees, including 24 working in Carpinteria, opted not to relocate, CKE said.

“A Japanese company that manufactures components for electric vehicles is setting up its U.S. headquarters and first U.S. manufacturing facility in West Sacramento. Mikuni Color Ltd., which also produces synthetic organic industrial dispersion ink, has moved into 21,000 square feet at Riverside Commerce Center.”

“High Times, the magazine that for decades has chronicled the culture and business of marijuana, is moving its operations from New York to Los Angeles, according to reports. The passage of Proposition 64 in November, which legalized the recreational consumption of marijuana in California, would appear to be a factor in the move.”

For its part, Gildan said it has yet to decide where to make American Apparel goods. The company makes the bulk of its products in manufacturing hubs in Central America and the Caribbean. Although it has some production sites in the U.S., the only finished goods made here are socks.

For years, American Apparel proudly touted its “Made in Los Angeles” motto. With its sale Tuesday to a Canadian sportswear firm, neither American Apparel’s name nor its motto will ring so true. . . Gildan, which said it will buy American Apparel’s inventory in a separate deal, will now move most, if not all, production to its manufacturing hubs in Central America and the Caribbean, analysts said. With minimum wage going up in the state, a company like Gildan would view manufacturing in L.A. as more of a liability than an asset.

San Francisco bag-maker Chrome Industries is the latest apparel company to move operations to Portland. The company said its headquarters will relocate there in early April.

Five years after arriving in San Diego as an exciting new alternative to car ownership and a weapon against climate change, car2go and its fleet of conspicuous blue-and-white Smart cars will vanish from local streets after today. . . San Diego was billed as a key milestone for car2go, the first North American city where the company would use all electric cars instead of gas-powered vehicles.

A San Jose solar company announced plans Wednesday to cut 2,500 jobs, including about 200 in California, as part of an effort to restructure operations and reduce expenses.

If all of these workers lost their jobs next year, it would be a huge blow to Southern California apparel manufacturing, which has steadily declined over the years, analysts said. This year, American Apparel laid off at least 500 workers as it cut production.

Financial services and insurance company Transamerica said Thursday that it will close its office in Los Angeles, cutting about 315 jobs.

A new report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Mo., nonprofit, tracks the number, survival and density of small businesses (those with fewer than 50 employees) across the U.S. While small companies are making it past their fifth year at a near-record rate, business ownership and firm growth remain historically low, possible reflections of declining dynamism across the U.S. economy.

Eureka Landing will house around 200 employees and manufacture dashboard subassemblies for Tesla. The project will be finished later this month and SAS will move in January, after improvements are made in the HVAC and electrical systems.

Job gains from opening establishments as a percentage of overall private-sector employment dropped to 1% in the first quarter of 2016, the lowest level recorded since the Labor Department began the data series in 1992, and half what it was at its peak.