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High energy costs then translate into high costs of food and supply since suppliers have to buy electricity and gas, Mayes said. Because of the high costs, companies that offer good-paying marketing jobs don’t want to expand into California. This makes it hard for people with limited education to find high enough wages. “We don’t have the jobs that pay for those who didn’t go to Stanford or UCLA or didn’t go to Berkeley or didn’t get a degree in computer science and life science,” he said.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased in 48 states and the District of Columbia in the third quarter of 2016, according to statistics on the geographic breakout of GDP released Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. . . . California saw a 3.3 percent growth rate, 16th lowest in the nation, tied with Alabama, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia.

New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Houston and Dallas are home to half of new business startups—and Americans are increasingly unwilling to move to such hotspots for the jobs they are spawning. At no time in recent history has entrepreneurship been so heavily concentrated in a handful of big cities, according to a bipartisan team of economic policy advisers at the Washington research and policy shop.

According to a landmark study for the Equality Opportunity Project, Stanford’s Raj Chetty and coauthors found that certain state and community colleges offer effective pathways to higher incomes for younger generations. . . Of the top ten colleges in the country with the best mobility rates, three are in California: top-ranked Cal State Los Angeles, Glendale Community College and Cal Poly Pomona.

The speech, at a meeting of the California Latino Economic Institute, served as a counter-step to Gov. Jerry Brown’s indictment of Trump in his State of the State address last week. While echoing Brown’s characterization of California as a “beacon of hope” for other states and countries, Villaraigosa lamented rising home prices, stagnant wages and a state poverty rate that ranks highest in the nation when adjusted for the cost of living. . . .“So we can’t be truly progressive unless all of us in California are progressing together … Economic inequality has grown because our policies have not kept pace with our changing economy.”

The rate increase is expected to take $400 a year from the average salary of $40,000 for the new teachers. About $200 a year would have been taken if the earnings forecast had been lowered to 7.25 percent as actuaries recommended, a 0.5 percent rate increase. . . Ingram said school districts project that “before long” 25 to 33 percent of their general funds will be taken by retirement and health benefits. . . Carlos Machado of the California School Boards Association said his group expects the combined CalSTRS and CalPERS rate increases to add $1.8 billion to the annual $60 billion cost facing school districts.

The report measures the “bare bones” cost of living — housing, food, transportation, health care, child care and taxes — to see what it takes for households to get by without public or private assistance. For a single adult living alone, that annual income is $27,942, or $13.23 per hour for a full-time worker. For a family with two adults, one preschooler and one infant, it’s $88,616.

California union membership grew with the state job market, up 65,000, or 2.6 percent, in a year. Nationally, it’s a different story: Unions had 14.6 million members in 2016, down 237,000, or a dip of 1.6 percent.

The Trump order aims to prevent such waste by requiring the agencies to repeal two old rules for every new one they publish. . . the text of the order suggests that for every dollar of new cost imposed on the private economy, each agency will have to find two dollars of burden to relieve. . . many civilized countries use such budgets to manage the regulatory state and stay competitive. Canada requires every rule that creates another hour of paperwork for business compliance to be offset one for one. The United Kingdom and Australia have harder versions that require the costs of new rules to be offset by deregulation of comparable net value.

“The total number of union members fell for both private- and public-sector workers last year, the first overall decline in four years, the Labor Department said Thursday. New policies from the Trump administration threaten to put more downward pressure on organized labor’s last stronghold, government employees, but might help stem membership losses among manufacturing and construction workers. Only 10.7% of workers were union members last year, down from 11.1% in 2015, and from more than 20% in the early 1980s. It is unclear whether any of Republican President Donald Trump’s policies could reverse this decadeslong slide in private-sector union membership, especially when unions were unable to gain traction with a union-friendly Democrat in the White House.”

How L.A. Unified’s headache was relieved is an eye-opening exercise in creative political accounting. . . The district simply recategorized a number of previous expenditures as qualifying for the LCFF grants, enabling it to declare it “will enable the district’s estimated ending balance to revert back to pre-CDE decision levels.” . . . Nothing changed, in other words, except some computer codes. And L.A. Unified still has an immense achievement gap.

“U.S. economic output decelerated in the final three months of 2016 to a 1.9% growth rate, returning after a brief spurt to the stubbornly lackluster pace that has prevailed through most of the current expansion and which President Donald Trump has pledged to double. Growth of gross domestic product, a broad measure of the goods and services produced across the economy, exceeded the pace of growth in a slow first half of 2016, but marked a slowdown from the third quarter’s seasonally and inflation adjusted 3.5% growth rate. More broadly, it was in line with the 2% growth rates that have made this the slowest economic expansion in post World War II history.”

The vote came after UC President Janet Napolitano called for the annual tuition increase of $282 and a bump in fees by $54 for the 2017-18 school year.

Solar Leaderboard (solarleaderboard.com) published its January 2017 Solar Index report and initial estimates indicate that installation activity declined by approximately 40% year over year. The Solar Index tracks permits issued in select areas and is meant to be an indicator for activity across the state.

Details on the proposal are scant, but the ordinance would likely be modeled on a similar plan that was approved by Portland’s City Council last November.