A drive to raise Los Angeles’s minimum wage to nearly twice the federal level would turn the country’s second-largest city into a prime test for whether high pay requirements help lift workers out of poverty or increase joblessness and blunt economic growth.
A hike in San Francisco’s minimum wage would benefit more than one in five city workers without harming the local economy, a new study concludes.
A new report by San Jose labor think tank Working Partnerships USA highlights an “invisible workforce” of janitors, landscapers and security guards keeping companies like Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. up and running.
Nowhere is that trend more pronounced than in Silicon Valley where the economic divide is widening between highly educated and skilled high-tech workers and low-paid workers who are trying to piece together a living in one of the country’s most expensive places.
The U.S. economy earlier this year recovered all the jobs lost during the recession, but those new jobs pay an average of 23% less than the ones lost in the downturn, according to an analysis released Monday by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Professional services jobs — engineers, architects, lawyers, accountants and consultants — are growing in California at more than twice the rate of overall employment since the recession ended in 2009, according to an analysis of state economic data.
A recent Brookings report found that of the regions with the greatest income disparity only one, Atlanta, is located in a red-leaning state. These include San Francisco, Miami, Boston, Washington, D.C., New York, Oakland, Chicago and Los Angeles. The lowest degree of inequality was found generally historically more conservative cities like Ft. Worth, Texas; Oklahoma City; Raleigh, N.C.; and Mesa, Ariz. Income inequality has risen most rapidly in the probably the most left-leaning big American city of luxury progressivism, San Francisco, where the wages of the poorest 20% of all households have actually declined amid the dot-com billions.
A new analysis of federal data by the Atlantic CityLab and Arizona State University found that workers in the San Jose metro area bring home real average wages — or the money left over after factoring in costs of living — of $75,288 per year. That compares to $64,321 in Stamford, Connecticut, $60,562 in San Francisco and wages in the $55,000-range in affluent sections of Maryland, North Carolina and Texas.
The big pension fund said it was the fourth time in five years that it has earned double-digit investment returns. CalPERS is still trying to claw its way back from the crippling multibillion-dollar losses of 2008-09, when the housing bubble burst and the financial markets crashed.
Hundreds of truckers who work at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach went on strike on Monday to protest what they called unfair labor practices.
Hollywood’s largest union representing actors and other performers has secured a new film and TV contract that will provide modest pay hikes for its approximately 165,000 members.
Currently, Los Angeles has a living wage ordinance that requires that city contractors pay at least $12.28 per hour without health benefits, or slightly less with health benefits, according to its Bureau of Contract Administration website.
About 215,000 state employees will be seeing a few dollars more in their next paycheck. Some workers say getting the more than four percent raise in one lump sum would be better.
An independent hearing officer Monday dealt a major setback to Los Angeles’ effort to rein in public employee pension costs, concluding that elected officials violated labor law when they voted to roll back retirement benefits for new civilian workers without negotiating with labor leaders..
SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said late Monday night that they have agreed to a 24-hour extension of the film and TV contracts that were set to expire at midnight June 30.