News

You would think the number of apprenticeships in the U.S. would have recovered since the recession.

Employers in Los Angeles and the rest of California will keep hiring in the next two years but at a slightly slower pace than in 2015, a new report said.

Los Angeles transit ridership has fallen even more than a recent Los Angeles Times front page story indicated, according to Thomas A. Rubin, who served as Chief Financial Officer (auditor/controller) of the Southern California Rapid Transit District (SCRTD) from 1989 until 1993,

Yet, demographics does not offer a full explanation. Anyone who works with job seekers throughout California today knows that workers in their mid-50s and over are retiring in part because of the difficulty more and more are encountering in finding employment. . . Further, demographics does not explain Thornberg’s third factor, the increased disability and other benefit rolls. As noted in these pages over the past few years, the disability rolls have skyrocketed in size since the early 2000s, especially Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). SSDI was at nearly 8.9 million workers on its rolls in December 2015, up from 6.5 million in 2005. And once on SSDI few exit for work.

It is an article of faith among California’s political class that insufficient higher educational opportunities are a constraint on California’s economic and job growth.  . . Unfortunately, the facts disagree with the faith. California is educating far more people than it is creating jobs for them to take. In the past 10 years, California’s public higher education system alone issued 2,455,421 degrees. Over the same period, the state saw a net increase of only 1,136,642 jobs.

U.S. consumers showed signs of strength in January, taking advantage of low oil prices to increase their spending and offering a welcome counterpoint to the gloom that has gripped investors and roiled markets since the start of the year.

Knowing that net out-migrants are more likely to be middle-class working young professional families provides some hints as to why people are leaving California for greener pastures. For one, California is an extraordinarily high cost-of-living state. Whether it is the state’s housing affordability crisis – California’s median home value per square foot is, on average, 2.1 times higher than Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington’s – California’s very expensive energy costs – the state’s residential electric price is about 1.5 times higher than the competing states – or the Golden State’s oppressive tax burden – California ranks 6th, nationally, in state-local tax burdens – those living in California are hit with a variety of higher bills, which cuts into their bottom line.

Consider Tesla Motors, which arguably wouldn’t exist but for environmental regulations. It also benefits from government subsidies of its “green” technology and tax credits for its customers – and loses money anyway. As if the need for such “incentives” weren’t proof enough that no real demand for electric cars exists, the company has been lobbying for tougher Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards even as traditional automakers seek relief from the onerous 54.5 mpg 2025 target. Setting aside Tesla’s blatant rent-seeking — a problem in itself — one can only imagine what their engineers might have achieved had the government not crafted a regulatory sandbox to confine their efforts.

The problem is that the 800+ chemicals listed in Proposition 65 are not devised to protect consumers, but rather serve as a cash cow for private trial lawyers to sue small business and reap the hefty settlement payout. Since 1986, nearly 20,000 lawsuits have been filed, adding up to over half a billion dollars in settlement payments by business owners.

After examining Piketty’s groundbreaking research, Matthew Rognlie of MIT concluded that much of the observed inequality is from redistribution of housing wealth away from the middle class. . . .Rognlie concluded that much of this was due to land regulation, and suggested the need to expand the housing supply and reexamine the land-use regulation that he associates with the loss of middle-class wealth. . . Homes represent only 9.4 percent of the wealth of the top 1 percent, but 30 percent for those in the upper 20 percent and, for the 60 percent of the population in the middle, roughly 60 percent. The decline in property ownership threatens to turn much of the middle class into a class of rental serfs, effectively wiping out the social gains of the past half-century.

But as the ranks of those workers swell, generating billions of dollars in revenue for their parent companies, legal and political disputes about the nature of gig work have proliferated. Lawsuits have challenged the notion that gig workers aren’t entitled to wage guarantees or benefits. A new California bill allowing gig workers to organize mirrors a national debate about whether and how to allow workers to pursue the types of employment benefits attached to traditional jobs.

The U.S. labor market slowed substantially in January but unemployment hit an eight-year low, sending mixed signals for Federal Reserve officials as they assess whether the economy is strong enough for another interest-rate increase.

The Commerce Department said on Friday the trade gap rose 2.7 percent to $43.4 billion. November’s trade deficit was revised down to $42.2 billion from the previously reported $42.4 billion.

The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that the goods and services deficit was $43.4 billion in December, up $1.1 billion from $42.2 billion in November, revised. December exports were $181.5 billion, $0.5 billion less than November exports. December imports were $224.9 billion, up $0.6 billion from November.BR/>

The value of California merchandise exports fell 5 percent in 2015, the first annual decline since 2009.