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Policies that increase housing costs have a clear constituency in all homeowners, but they hurt renters and anyone who is hoping to move to an expensive city. The burden of land use regulations are borne disproportionately by low-income people who spend a larger proportion of their income on housing relative to higher income people. These regressive effects of land use policy extend beyond reducing welfare if the least-advantaged Americans. Additionally, rules that increase the cost of housing in the country’s most productive cities reduce income mobility and economic growth.

More than a quarter of U.S. workers are now employed in a field licensed at the state level, according to a recent White House study. And regulators continue to add to the roster of more than 1,100 occupations that require a license to operate in at least one state.

The Obama administration’s belief that it can mandate its way to economic growth—and its imposition of new regulatory costs that eclipse any in recent history—is holding back job creation and America’s national recovery. The overtime mandate is more of the same.

The California job market is getting closer to recovering from the Great Recession, but workers still face a diffi cult hiring environment. After losing 1.3 million jobs between July 2007 and February 2010, California has since added more than 2 million jobs.1 Despite this progress, the labor market is not yet back to pre-recession strength.

The crazy cost structure in the U.S. also bears scrutiny. America’s infrastructure is so hard to fix in part because it is so much more expensive to do stuff here than in many other countries. It’s a bit like our health care system, in that regulatory capture, cronyism, and sweetheart deals involving both business and labor combine to drive up public costs. It ought to be getting cheaper to fix infrastructure—we use materials more efficiently, the machines are more powerful and faster, designs have improved—but costs are instead exploding.

That’s what seems to have happened this week around an issue that’s crucial to the growth of new businesses like Uber and Taskrabbit: How to provide benefits to workers who use those platforms to find clients. On Tuesday, a letter surfaced calling for a new social safety net regime that could allow people to move easily from gig to gig without losing the benefits and protections usually contained within the traditional employment relationship. Right now, companies say, it’s difficult for them to offer employment-like perks without running the risk of getting hit with lawsuits.

A report researched and released Thursday by Environmental Entrepreneurs, or E2, called Utah “a hive of clean energy activity,” ranking it No. 1 among states that created clean energy jobs in this year’s third quarter.

One million more skilled workers, to close a growing degree shortage driven by shifts in technology and educational expectations among industries. One million more homes for middle-income families, as soaring costs once again put buying out of reach for most Californians. And one million more acre-feet of water per year, representing a push for sustainable management of the state’s dwindling supplies.

About 14.3 percent of Californians between 65 and 75 worked full time in 2014, up from 7.5 percent in 2000. As baby boomers become seniors, that translates into almost 440,000 senior citizens working full time last year in California, more than double the number from 2000.

The State of California added 23,000 private sector jobs during the month of October, according to the ADP Regional Employment Report

Gov. Jerry Brown’s GO-Biz agency approved almost $44 million in 89 new tax credits Tuesday for companies that have promised to create at least 7,000 new jobs in California, a new report says. . . “California is typically a higher-cost labor market,” Aetna Real Estate Client Relationship Manager Susan Beers told the board in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. “It makes Fresno a more desirable service center for us than it would be otherwise.”

Of the 9,000 businesses that he estimates disinvested in California, some relocated completely while others kept their headquarters in California but targeted out-of-state locations for expansions, Vranich found. The report did not count instances of companies opening a new out-of-state facility to tap a growing market, an act unrelated to California’s business environment.

Regulating emissions is a job for politicians — and they’re failing. That’s frustrating, and in the absence of effective government action, there’s an added moral obligation on companies to act. Even so, engaging in scientific research and public advocacy shouldn’t be crimes in a free country. Using the criminal law to shame and encumber companies that do so is a dangerous arrogation of power.

The cost of living, and especially renting, in Los Angeles continues to skyrocket and will continue to for the foreseeable future. A new third quarter rental market report by Marcus & Millichap confirms that rents are climbing all over town: asking rents citywide were up 7.8 percent to an average of $1,873 per month. For the year, the report predicts rents will climb 4.8 percent overall, “more than doubling the rate of inflation.”

Most voters in counties along the coast were hopeful about their personal finances in the next few years. But in the interior, mainly the Central Valley and Inland Empire, less than half were hopeful and most were at least somewhat anxious.