Heading into the third year of a prolonged drought, the Allens are among the many California farmers forced to make dire choices that could leave as much as 800,000 acres, or about 7 percent of the state’s cropland, fallow. While some think that estimate may be inflated so early in the planting season, the consensus is that drier and drier seasons are on the horizon.
Things can and should be better in California, and we should have real conversations about how to address the state’s problems. We need real policy reforms, real tax reform, and real expenditure reform. But any real discussion has to begin on an honest footing, with a candid conversation about what is really happening in the state and local economies. Instead, headlines continue to be dominated by hype, hyperbole, and flat out nonsense.
California’s economy added 11,800 net new jobs in March, a meager showing after robust gains the month before, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday
Industry partnerships are just one strategy states are using to fight persistent unemployment and a less-discussed but troubling trend: In every state and the District of Columbia, the labor force participation rate is shrinking.
U.S. nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 192,000 last month, the Labor Department said Friday. January and February payrolls were revised up by a combined 37,000. The nation’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.7% as more people found work and more people joined the labor force.
The UCLA Anderson Forecast said L.A. needs to make bigger strides in improving the education of its workers and business climate. The county has lost more net jobs than any large metropolitan area in the nation from 1990 to 2013, the forecast said.
Employment prospects for teens and young adults in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas plummeted between 2000 and 2011. On a number of measures—employment rates, labor force underutilization, unemployment, and year-round joblessness—teens and young adults fared poorly, and sometimes disastrously.
California’s economy added 58,800 net new jobs in February, gaining back some momentum after a lackluster showing the month before, the state’s Employment Development Department reported Friday.
The layoffs were felt at the studio’s Culver City headquarters and at international offices. Among the divisions said to be deeply affected by the staff reductions is Sony Pictures Interactive, the studio’s digital marketing arm.
Teens and young adults traditionally have struggled much more to find work than their older counterparts. But a new Brookings Institution report shows the road to employment for young job seekers nationwide and here in Sacramento during the 2000s has been especially rocky.
The Sacramento region placed 97th on a list of the 100 largest U.S cities ranked by employment rate for young people aged 20 to 24. For teenagers, the region placed 82nd.
Job growth picked up in February as many employers shrugged off snowstorms and bitter cold across much of the U.S., suggesting resilience in the labor market that should allow the Federal Reserve to continue rolling back its bond-buying program.
California appeared to go in the opposite direction of the national economy in January, shedding a net 31,600 jobs that month, the state’s Employment Development Department reported Friday.
Increasing the minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. Most of them would receive higher pay that would increase their family’s income, and some of those families would see their income rise above the federal poverty threshold. But some jobs for low-wage workers would probably be eliminated, the income of most workers who became jobless would fall substantially, and the share of low-wage workers who were employed would probably fall slightly.
Raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2016 would cost the economy 500,000 jobs, according to the Congressional Budget Office.