Thanks to high birth and immigration rates over the last several decades, California has one of the nation’s lowest proportions of over-65 residents – but it also has one of its higher elderly growth rates, a new Census Bureau report reveals.
Despite the steadily decreasing unemployment rate, a majority of voters describe the employment situation in the state as very serious. Sixty-four percent say jobs are difficult to find in their communities, while just 21 percent have the impression they’re widely abundant.
The U.S. economy contracted at a much steeper pace than previously estimated in the first quarter, but there are indications that growth has since rebounded strongly.
U.S. chief executives are slightly less positive about the economy’s growth prospects this year and fewer of them expect to increase their capital expenditures in the next six months, according to a quarterly by the Business Roundtable released on Tuesday.
Traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach rose in May compared with the same month last year, according to figures released Monday.
Calling growth in the state’s sales tax receipts “weaker than expected in recent months,” Chiang said he was surprised, “given the improvement in the State’s other major revenues and the economy in general.”
For people who moved from one county to another, moving because of a job-related reason rose with the distance of the move: 23 percent of moves less than 50 miles and 48 percent of those 500 miles or more. Moving for housing-related reasons showed change in the opposite direction, comprising 42 percent of shorter distance moves and 18 percent of longer distance ones.
For the month of April, the state’s merchandise export trade totaled $14.09 billion, up 7.8% from the $13.07 billion in exports recorded in April 2013.
A notable exception to the “right place” trend is California. Criticized by some as a hostile, high-cost environment for business, California has shown a remarkable knack for coming out ahead in the race for large companies. The Golden State’s strength, it would seem, is reinvention: lowering its profile in manufacturing and financial services and strengthening its footprint in technology. No fewer than 31 of the 51 California companies on the Fortune 500 in 1995 are absent from the 2014 list. Three large defense contractors moved to other states: Lockheed Martin to Maryland, Rockwell Automation to Wisconsin, and Northrop Grumman to Virginia. California also lost a host of prominent corporate residents to mergers — among them, Pacific Telesis to AT&T (Texas), PacifiCare to UnitedHealth Group (Minnesota), and BankAmerica to the renamed Bank of America (North Carolina).
A Fed following the Taylor Rule would have raised rates by now, and it would not have exposed the nation to inflation risks by buying so many trillions of dollars of bonds and mortgage-backed securities over the past few years, several of the economists at the podium said. One paper presented at the conference, by University of Houston economist David Papell, found that the economy does better when the Fed sticks close to the Taylor Rule or something like it.
Consumer spending was down $8.1 billion, or 0.1%, last month, the Commerce Department said Friday.
A contraction in the nation’s economic output in the first quarter again deferred hopes for a sustained pickup in growth, another stumble for a lackluster recovery approaching the end of its fifth year.
The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter of 2014, the latest stumble for a recovery that has struggled to find its footing since the recession ended almost five years ago.
Economists, real-estate agents and many home builders expected first-time and entry-level buyers to begin returning to the market this year, jump-starting the sputtering housing recovery. So far, that hasn’t happened.
Without the dramatic revenue dips or spikes of years past, and with scant new policy proposals, this year’s May Revision was about as exciting as a jar of pudding.
But one number jumped out. By next year, the state expects 11 million Californians – 30% of the population to receive Medi-Cal benefits.