Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill last month that provides employers with a limited window to correct technical violations in itemized wage statements before being subject to costly litigation.
California fared poorly in the latest round of a bellwether series of key elementary and middle-school tests. “What’s sometimes called the Nation’s Report Card, a sampling of fourth- and eighth-graders in reading and math, painted a dismal picture of a state that insists it is prioritizing K-12 education, on which it is spending $53 billion this fiscal year,” the San Jose Mercury News noted.
Other major economic divides—between capital and labor, Wall Street versus Main Street—defined politics for much of the 20th century. But today’s tangible-intangible divide is particularly tragic because it undermines America’s peculiar advantage in being a powerhouse in both the material and non-material worlds. No other large country can say that, certainly not China, Japan, or Germany, industrial powerhouses short on resources, while our closest cousins, such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, remain, for the most part, dependent on commodity trade.
U.S. employers hired at their strongest clip this year in October and wage growth picked up, signs of reassurance for Federal Reserve officials as they weigh an interest-rate raise before year’s end.
In sum, men and women of all ages experienced a rise in LTU after the Great Recession. In this essay, we document the lesser-known fact that LTU affected older women more strongly. This group experienced a remarkable change: from a low pre-recession LTU-to-unemployment ratio of 14 percent to a post-recession rate of 50 percent.
Weak productivity growth is one reason employers could be reluctant to raise wages. If workers don’t become more efficient, businesses may see little need to hand out raises. Productivity advanced at a 1.6% seasonally adjusted annual pace in the third quarter. But from a year earlier, business productivity improved just 0.4%.
When Sacramento voters go to the polls next year, they may find four competing minimum-wage proposals to choose from. All of them would raise the wage to an hourly $15 before tying it to inflation.
The New York attorney general has begun a sweeping investigation of Exxon Mobil to determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how those risks might hurt the oil business.
Finance and insurance; professional, scientific, and technical services; and wholesale trade were the leading contributors to the increase in U.S. economic growth in the second quarter of 2015, according to statistics on the breakout of gross domestic product (GDP) by industry released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Overall, 18 of 22 industry groups contributed to the 3.9 percent increase in real GDP in the second quarter.
The pact could have a major effect on California, home to the nation’s busiest ports and a major exporter of electronics, farm products, machinery and other goods and services to Pacific Rim countries.
If you follow the headlines, you might not think that these jobs still exist. But they do, and many of them are in the building trades.
New technologies and business models are fundamentally changing the economic landscape across the country, adding value to consumers’ lives and bringing new opportunities for workers. These changes are also raising questions about the changing nature of work in America for businesses, workers, labor organizations, governments, and consumers alike. As our country has at prior moments of workplace change, we must find a path forward that encourages innovation, embraces new models, creates certainty for workers, business, and government and ensures that workers and their families can lead sustainable lives and realize their dreams.
Taking the Silicon Valley-Bay Area region out of the picture would have devastating effects, essentially eliminating the recovery, while removing Greater Los Angeles actually improves California’s labor market recovery. For instance, in aggregate, California’s employment grew by 7.5% between 2009 and 2014. However, if the Silicon Valley-Bay Area region were to be removed, this growth rate falls to just 5.7%. Moreover, removing Greater Los Angeles actually increases California’s employment growth to 8.1%. In term of the unemployment rate, removing the Silicon Valley-Bay Area versus removing Greater Los Angeles, on net, increases California’s average unemployment rate between 2009 and 2014 by roughly a half-percentage point. Simply put, without the Silicon Valley-Bay Area, California’s post-recession recovery becomes sluggish (at best), but without Great Los Angeles, it improves.
A new study shows that about 9,000 companies left California in the last seven years to reduce costs and improve prospects of growing their businesses. The report provides details about disinvestments by company name, ranks the popularity of the destination states and cities, and outlines the difficulties of doing business in California.
Following a series of meetings, proponents of the various tax-extension proposals say they are exploring a compromise that would raise money into a special fund to pay for schools and colleges as well as healthcare programs. Involved in the talks are the Service Employees International Union, California Teachers Association, California Hospital Association and the California Medical Association.