03/29/2024

News

Second Quarter Growth in Service Industries Widespread Across States

Today, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released–for the first time–gross domestic product (GDP) by state for 21 industry sectors on a quarterly basis.1 These new statistics supplement BEA’s national quarterly GDP by industry statistics first released in April 2014. These new data provide timely information on how specific industries contribute to accelerations, decelerations, and turning points in economic growth at the state level, including key information about the impact of differences in industry composition across states.

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Dan Walters: US School Bill Roils Our Debate

The Every Student Succeeds Act replaces the No Child Left Behind law that former President George W. Bush persuaded Congress to enact and state and local education officials intensely disliked as being too simplistic and inflexible in rating schools only on academic test results. . . In continuing to require officials to identify low-performing schools, the federal law also may rescue another aspect of the accountability process that the education establishment dislikes – the “parent trigger” law that allows parents to intervene when a school is failing, even seizing control and converting it to a charter.

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Calfiornia is Wrong Model for World on Climate

The climate agenda being pursued in California is one of high taxes and stringent regulations that are hampering cheap and abundant forms of energy while propping up costly ones at taxpayer expense. It may please activist billionaires (who don’t seem to have a problem producing their own massive carbon footprint), but it is increasing unemployment, poverty and income inequality in the state.

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How CBO Estimates the Effects of the Affordable Care Act on the Labor Market

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will make the labor supply, measured as the total compensation paid to workers, 0.86 percent smaller in 2025 than it would have been in the absence of that law, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. Three-quarters of that decline will occur because of health insurance expansions, which raise effective tax rates on earnings from labor—for instance, by phasing out health insurance subsidies as people’s income rises—and thus reduce the amount of labor that workers choose to supply. The labor force is projected to be about 2 million full-time-equivalent workers smaller in 2025 under the ACA than it would have been otherwise. Those estimates were based mainly on CBO’s calculations of the effects of the law’s major components on marginal and average tax rates and on the agency’s analysis of research about the change in the labor supply resulting from a change in tax rates. For components of the law that were difficult to express in terms of changes in tax rates, CBO based its estimates on a review of the available literature about similar policy changes.

Research & Studies
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Californians Have High Poverty, High Incomes

However, the official poverty rate calculated for the report used a half-century-old method that makes no allowance for regional differences in either incomes or living costs. The bureau has developed a “supplemental measure” that takes those and other factors into account and by that method, California’s poverty rate is the nation’s highest at 24.3 percent, largely due to its extraordinarily high housing costs.

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US Solar Industry Battles “White Privilege” Image Problem

Despite a sharp drop in the price of solar panels and innovative financing plans that have brought the technology to many middle income households over the past decade, it is still seen as a luxury only rich, mostly white, consumers can afford. . . Data from U.S. online solar marketplace EnergySage showed that just 4 percent of more than 10,000 people actively shopping for solar systems on its site identified themselves as black, with 11 percent split between Hispanic and Asian shoppers. Those who identified themselves as white made up 73 percent of the shoppers and the rest did not declare their race. EnergySage said nearly 80 percent of shoppers reported household incomes of $50,000 or more and nearly a third declared incomes of $125,000 or more.

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Los Angeles: City of Losers?

Since 1990 Los Angeles County has added a paltry 34,000 jobs while its population has grown 1.2 million. In contrast, the Bay Area, which added roughly the same number of people during the same time, gained a net 500,000 jobs, mostly in the suburbs. . . The problem now, however, are the factors in L.A. that drive industry away, such as ultra-high electricity prices and a high level of regulation. Even amidst the recent industrial boom in many other parts of the country, Los Angeles has continued to lose manufacturing jobs; Los Angeles’ industrial job count stands at 363,900, still the largest number in the nation, but down sharply from 900,000 just a decade ago. . . Today San Francisco and its immediate environs, despite its much smaller population, is home to virtually every powerful politician in the state: both its U.S. Senators, the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor and the Attorney General. Not surprisingly, state policies on everything from greenhouse gases, urban density and transit to social issues follows lines that originate in, and largely benefit, San Francisco.

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CalChamber Releases List of New Employment Laws Affecting Businesses in 2016

The California Chamber of Commerce today released the list of new employment laws scheduled to take effect in 2016 or earlier that will have an impact on businesses in California.

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Middle-Class Families, Pillar of the American Dream, Are No Longer in the Majority, Study Finds

Rapid growth of upper-income households, coupled with an increase in less-educated low earners, has driven the decline of the middle-income population to a hair below 50% of the total this year, Pew found. In 1971, the middle class accounted for 61% of the population, and it has been declining steadily since.

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Commutes to San Francisco Get Longer for Those Earning Under 40k

The median commute distance for people who work in San Francisco and earn less than $40,000 jumped from 9 miles in 2008 to almost 15 miles in 2013, according to a study by Zillow. The commute for those making more than $40,000 remained relatively unchanged over that period.

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Rents in LA Area Grow Less Affordable, Report Says

In Los Angeles and Orange counties, 58.5% of renters spent more than 30% of their income on housing last year, the point at which economists consider it burdensome, the report found. 

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Chapman: OC Jobs to Grow 2.5% in 2016

Chapman University in Orange said Orange County employment in five key industry sectors remains “well below” prerecession levels and that payrolls will grow by 2.5% next year after finishing 2015 up 3.2%.

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Bold Action to Bolster Economic Resilience

The San Francisco Bay Area is an economic powerhouse. The region’s innovation industries, from high tech to biotech, helped lead California out of the Great Recession. We are near full employment in some areas, and are responsible for 53.5 percent of the state’s net job growth since 2007. And while we are home to just 17 percent of the state’s population, we pay 36 percent of total state personal income taxes at a level per capital more than double the statewide average.

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Massive Transportation Bill has No $ for CA Bullet Train

Since then, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has been unable to attract outside investors and doesn’t have even 40 percent of the money it needs to complete the initial 300-mile, $31 billion segment — much less the $68 billion needed to build a rail line linking San Francisco and downtown Los Angeles. This has led bullet-train advocates, starting with Robert Cruickshank of the California High Speed Rail Blog, to repeatedly urge Congress and the Obama administration to provide more federal dollars. In planning documents from three years ago, state officials said they were hoping on $42 billion in federal help.

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Survey: L.A. Hiring Up a Bit in First Quarter

The Milwaukee staffing giant’s quarterly survey of employers in Los Angeles and Orange counties found that 15 percent plan to increase staff, 6 percent plan layoffs and 78 percent plan to keep staffing levels constant.

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