News

State personal income growth accelerated to 1.5 percent in the second quarter of 2014 from 1.2 percent in the first quarter. Personal income growth ranged from 2.7 percent in North Dakota and Nebraska to 1.1 percent in New York and Alaska, with growth accelerating in 36 states. . . For the second consecutive quarter, the earnings increase in Texas was larger than the increase in every other state. Earnings in Texas, which accounted for 8.9 percent of the nation, grew $19.2 billion in the second quarter. Earnings in California, which accounted for 13.2 percent of the nation, grew $16.9 billion.

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2014,  according to the “third” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 2.1 percent.

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2014,  according to the “third” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 2.1 percent.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in the U.S., expanded at an annual rate of 4.6% in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said Friday in its third estimate of the gauge. The agency previously pegged April-through-June growth at 4.2%.

This report provides an overview of the demographic, social, and economic characteristics of California’s population. Topics include income, poverty, education, health insurance coverage, language, place of birth, migration, and more. The tabulations in this report are based on special data runs from the American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Sample 1-year file. 

Real GDP increased in 292 of the nation’s 381 metropolitan areas in 2013, led by widespread growth in finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing, nondurable-goods manufacturing, and professional and business services, according to new statistics released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Natural resources and mining also spurred strong growth in several metropolitan areas. Collectively, real GDP for U.S. metropolitan areas increased 1.7 percent in 2013 after increasing 2.6 percent in 2012.

Compared with local governments, which rely to a greater extent on property taxes, states generate the bulk of their revenue from taxes levied on current economic activity, namely personal income and consumption. Therefore, when the economy operates below its potential, state tax revenues tend to suffer. Insofar as income inequality contributes to economic output falling short of potential, it undermines the growth of states’ tax bases.

Our analysis found a negative relationship between income inequality and state tax revenue tends. When we tested the relationship by tax structure, we found the negative effect was stronger and only statistically significant in the sales tax-reliant states. The findings support our view that rising income inequality contributes to weaker tax revenue growth by undermining the rate of overall economic expansion.

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..

While the outlook for California’s jobseekers is considerably better than in recent years, substantial challenges remain. Unemployment remains high in many regions across the state, and persistent weakness in the public sector job market is undermining the overall strength of the economic recovery. Moreover, the current extended period of economic growth follows decades of wage stagnation and Great Recession will not be suffi cient to ensure broad-based economic growth that reaches workers across the wage distribution.

Averaging California’s economy masks some deep-seated problems – including the nation’s highest poverty rate – that shouldn’t be ignored in the political rush to proclaim a “comeback.”

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.2% in the second quarter after accounting for inflation, the Commerce Department said.

After a puzzling first-quarter contraction, growth has returned, though the recovery remains the weakest since the second world war. As of June, the expansion is now five years old, longer than the post-war average of 58 months . . .

This spring, payroll employment in the US reached an all-time high, finally surpassing the pre-recession peak of 138.4 million jobs in the first quarter of 2008. At that time many said that the 8.7 million jobs lost in the Great Recession had at last been re-gained. However, they are not the same jobs that were lost, nor will unemployment have returned to a level less than the 5% of 2008. Much press reporting during this long economic recovery has expressed worry that low wage jobs dominate the labor market rebound, that the middle income household has not advanced economically, and that most of the income gains of the US have gone to those with high incomes, skewing the distribution of income in the US towards the wealthy or high-income earners.

The study (PDF), prepared by the economic consulting company IHS Global Insight (IHS), also compares which metro areas have the most households in the top, bottom, and middle thirds of the country’s income distribution. The areas with the fewest middle-income households are mostly coastal: Out of the 357 metro areas, San Jose has the lowest percentage of households making more than $35,000 and less than $75,000, followed by the areas around Bridgeport, Conn.; Washington, D.C.; San Francisco and Oakland; Boston; and New York. The Washington-Arlington-Alexandria and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro areas have the highest percentage of households making more than $75,000 and the lowest percentage making less than $35,000.

The topic of income inequality and its effects has been the subject of countless analysis stretching back generations and crossing geopolitical boundaries. Despite the tendency to speak about this issue in moral terms, the central questions are economic ones: Would the U.S. economy be better off with a narrower income gap? And, if an unequal distribution of income hinders growth, which solutions could do more harm than good, and which could make the economic pie bigger for all?