“Taken together, the voluminous data dumps reveal that those on the upper rungs of the economic ladder, and the communities in which they cluster, particularly in the Bay Area, are doing well. However, very large portions of the state, both geographically and sociologically, are struggling.”
“Real gross domestic product — the value of the goods and services produced by the nation’s economy less the value of the goods and services used up in production, adjusted for price changes — increased at an annual rate of 3.9 percent in the second quarter of 2015, according to the “”third”” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 0.6 percent. . . In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was 3.7 percent. With the third estimate for the second quarter, the general picture of economic growth remains the same; personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and nonresidential fixed investment increased more than previously estimated . . . “
“The technology-heavy San Francisco Bay Area almost single-handedly propped up California’s otherwise lethargic economic performance in 2014, a new report from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis indicates.”
Real GDP increased in 282 of the nation’s 381 metropolitan areas in 2014, led by growth in several industry groups: professional and business services, wholesale and retail trade, and the group of finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing. Natural resources and mining remained a strong contributor to growth in several metropolitan areas. Collectively, real GDP for U. S. metropolitan areas increased 2.3 percent in 2014 after increasing 1.9 percent in 2013.
Half of the 16 U.S. metro areas where the economy grew at a 6% rate or better last year were in Texas, led by the energy-rich Midland region’s 24.1% advance in gross domestic product, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. . . Among the metro areas with the 25 largest economies, Dallas was the leader, followed by San Jose, Calif., up 6.7% and San Francisco, up 5.2%.
The lack of change shows that the progress in the U.S. job market—in 2014 the economy added 2.6 million jobs, the most in more than a decade—have remained insufficient to lift the fortunes of the nearly 47 million people living in poverty.
The official definition has changed little since its adoption 50 years ago, when its threshold was set as cash income equal to three times what a frugal family spent on food. A relatively new unofficial rate is based on a much wider definition of income, including the earned-income tax credit and noncash subsidies for housing, school lunch and home heating. It also adjusts income for taxes, child care, health insurance and out-of-pocket medical costs. The unofficial rate also reflects regional costs of living with different thresholds for renters and people with mortgages.
Tax and transfer programs can create significant bonuses and penalties for low- and moderate-income cohabiters with children. We find that federal tax laws can create marriage penalties that reach almost 10 percent of earnings for our hypothetical couples earning $40,000 or $50,000 a year. In contrast, a prototypical couple earning $20,000 a year could receive a marriage bonus in excess of 10 percent of earnings. Because the transfer programs we consider largely treat cohabiting parents the same as married couples, they create neither significant marriage penalties nor bonuses; however, there may be instances in which couples are misclassified and receive transfer benefits as separate households when cohabiting which could lead to marriage penalties from those programs.
This analysis addresses the growing problem of marriage penalties created by the increased size and coverage of means-tested social-welfare benefits. Depending on the relationship between cohabiters (whether or not they have children in common and whether or not they share food or utility expenses) and their combined and relative earnings, getting married can result in bonuses of as much as 11 percent of their combined income or penalties of more than about 32 percent of their combined income.
One feature of the new EPI analysis is a nifty table (see page 8) that goes some way towards answering why the gap has widened. The table highlights how between 1995 and 2000, labor’s share of income grew, despite larger-than-usual growth in inequality of compensation. Why? Because when labor markets are tight and productivity is rising–two features of that five-year-long golden age—workers’ pay will rise. This suggests that pursuing full employment, generally considered a 5% unemployment rate or below, could go a long way towards generating long-hoped-for upwards wage pressures throughout the economy.
Now a new UCLA study finds that of the 4 million adults in California who are 65 or older, 1.11 million struggle to make ends meet — an effective poverty rate of 28 percent. That’s more than triple the number of California elderly who were considered impoverished under standard federal measures.
A long-sought CalSTRS rate increase, more than doubling the bite from school districts, is the reason given last week for a proposal to increase the lump-sum death benefit, unchanged in the last 13 years.
California growers took in more revenue in 2014 compared to the year before, although their profits declined by about 10 percent, according to new figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service and the Pacific Institute, a water policy think-tank.
Today, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is releasing prototype quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) by state statistics for 2005–2014. The quarterly GDP by state statistics are released for 21 industry sectors and are in both current and inflation-adjusted chained (2009) dollars.
The leader of that pack was Texas. The state’s $1.5 trillion economy is larger than Australia’s and grew at an impressive 5.2% clip last year. . . California’s economy, the largest state economy, grew 2.8%. The Golden State was propelled by a 7.7% growth rate in the third quarter of last year. Florida’s economy advanced 2.7% in 2014 and New York’s economy grew 2.5%.