Although California’s official unemployment rate climbed out of the cellar during the year that ended June 30, it still had the nation’s second highest rate of total “labor underutilization,” according to a new federal government report.
The Silicon Valley Leadership Group is helping to lay the groundwork for ballot measures in November 2016 in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Contra Costa counties. The counties would join Alameda County, which already has a half-cent transportation sales tax in place.
A study released Monday by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA found that smog-forming chemicals making their way across the Pacific Ocean from China are undermining the progress California has made in reducing ozone, the most caustic component in L.A. smog.
These policies – and their predecessors over the years – are at the heart of rising housing and electricity costs, which are plaguing California’s massive population of struggling households. As a recent Manhattan Institute paper reveals, over 1 million Californians already face “energy poverty,” paying upward of 10 percent of their incomes to keep their lights on. The most hard-hit areas, the study found, were in inland communities, particularly the Central Valley, where the climate tends far more to extremes than in the more affluent coastal regions.
U.S. employers are adding jobs at a steady clip though the labor market is showing little sign of overheating, factors likely to reassure Federal Reserve officials as they weigh their first interest-rate increase since 2006.
The move to reclassify contractors comes amid heated political commentary on the topic — 2016 presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush have weighed in on the matter — and mounting lawsuits from workers. In addition to Instacart, courier service Shyp, valet-parking service Luxe Valet and home tech-repair company Eden have each changed at least part of their workforce from independent contractors to employees. Among those facing lawsuits: ride-booking company Lyft, on-demand laundry service Washio, repair service Handy, delivery service Postmates, as well as Instacart and Shyp.
Although its overall population growth continues to slow, California’s senior population – those 65 and older – will nearly double in the next 15 years, a new report from the Public Policy Institute of California concludes.
A union-backed proposal to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour was cleared Monday to begin collecting signatures for a ballot initiative next year as local efforts continue nationwide to boost the minimum wage to better reflect the cost of living.
We know that the economic recovery’s effects have been unevenly felt. The recovery has been kind to those who invested in certain stocks or whose title begins with the word “chief.” It’s been less charitable to certain groups, like African American workers, whose unemployment rates have lingered in the double-digits for most of the past eight years.
The price index for personal-consumption expenditures, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, rose 0.2% in June from a month earlier, the Commerce Department said. From a year earlier, prices were up just 0.3%.
The implication is the federal government is fueling a vicious cycle of higher prices and government aid that ultimately could cost taxpayers and price some Americans out of higher education, similar to what some economists contend happened with the housing bubble.
In the Bay Area, planners now mandate that all growth in the next 25 years will take place on 4 percent of the land, essentially contrary to the largely suburban growth that has characterized the region. It’s hard to see how this approach will do anything but spike real estate prices even higher.
The report notes that the state’s renewable-energy mandates and carbon cap-and-trade program have forced electricity prices to rise, as they have implemented a “regressive energy tax, imposing proportionally higher costs in certain counties, such as California’s inland and Central Valley regions, where summer electricity consumption is highest but household incomes are lowest.”
For many decades, San Diego leaders held a vision of progress that we would argue is a narrow one–focused on a limited set of industries and built on a fragmented social and economic landscape. As a result, lines both literal and metaphorical have divided the region at every level
The U.S. average was $2.67 Friday, while California was still much higher at $3.79. The AAA estimates a huge drop could save drivers $500 by the end of the year.