Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal see a growing risk of recession in the U.S. Though few could identify a specific trigger—such as the business investment crunch that drove the economy down in 2001 or the housing crisis that caused a recession in 2007—economists pointed to a number of worries, including trade tensions with […]
Tame inflation, low gas prices and rising wages are putting more dollars in the pockets of American workers, a positive sign for consumer spending headed into 2019. After adjusting for inflation, average hourly earnings rose a seasonally adjusted 1.1% in December from a year earlier, the strongest rate of growth since September 2016, the Labor […]
The number of unfilled jobs in the U.S. fell in November to the lowest level since June, though openings still exceeded unemployed Americans. There were a seasonally adjusted 6.89 million job openings on the last business day of November, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That was down from a revised 7.13 million at the end […]
The California Legislature gets its share of national attention for some of the wackadoodle bills that it routinely signs into law. It’s 2019, which means that it’s now illegal for full-service restaurants to provide straws with sodas unless a customer specifically asks for one. Furthermore, water and unflavored milk must now be the default option […]
Any day now, the California Supreme Court will rule on what may be one of the most significant cases affecting pension reform in California history. The case, CalFire Local 2881 vs. CalPERS, challenges one of the provisions of PEPRA(Public Employee Pension Reform Act) Governor Brown’s 2013 pension reform legislation. The plaintiffs argue that PEPRA’s abolition […]
If you spent 2018 mainlining misery about global warming, inequality, toxic politics or other anxieties, I’m here to break your addiction with some good news: The world got better last year, and it is going to get even better this year. Poverty around the world is plummeting; half the world is now middle class; and […]
The U.S. Census Bureau and the state Department of Finance issue annual population estimates each December and they don’t always agree on how many human beings occupy California. During the previous decade, following the 2000 census, their estimates were as much as one million persons apart – largely because of different calculations of state-to-state migration. […]
Mayors and governors of both parties tout German-style apprenticeships as an alternative pathway to employment, in the face of ballooning college tuition and the need for career options for noncollege graduates. Support for increasing hands-on training comes from all corners—Democrats and Republicans, business and labor, the Trump and the Obama administrations. German Chancellor Angela Merkel […]
The Trump administration is looking into ways to help workers, but experts say the retraining problem is hard to fix. The key program is Trade Adjustment Assistance, installed in the 1960s, which provides extended unemployment benefit payments and job training to workers who the government determines lost employment due to overseas competition. Multiple studies have […]
The fear of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) has spurred countless conversations about the future of work and how we humans will fare in an age of robots. Many fear technological unemployment as others preemptively denounce future income inequality. To confront the “dismal” future of work, many in the policy world, the tech world, and […]
Mr. Trump’s initial response to GM’s plant closure news was to threaten to punish the company by stripping its federal subsidies. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow later acknowledged that Mr. Trump can’t legally single out GM for subsidy retribution. Instead the White House may take the better route of proposing to eliminate subsidies for […]
For the first time in five years, violent crime was down in Los Angeles in 2018, with the number of homicides on track to be among the lowest in more than 50 years. The data mirror an overall drop in crime this year in the parts of L.A. County patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department, as […]
We estimate that California’s total state and local government debt as of 6/30/2017 totaled just over $1.5 trillion. That total includes all outstanding bonds, loans, and other long-term liabilities, along with the officially reported unfunded liability for other post-employment benefits (primarily retiree healthcare), as well as unfunded pension liabilities. Our findings may appear to contradict […]
U.S. employers added jobs at a robust pace in December and wages posted their biggest full-year gain of the expansion, providing a strong new counterpoint to recent worries in financial markets that the economy is sputtering because of trade frictions and rising interest rates. Stock prices rose on the economic news, then jumped even higher […]
No other country on Earth has bet as big on electric vehicles as Norway, and it’s finally paying off. Half of all new cars sold to Norwegians are either fully electric or hybrid, making the country of 5.3 million the biggest per-capita market for EVs. Norway’s EV success is owed to both the carrot and […]