Her remarks added to a series of statements that began trickling out from the Capitol early this year and have intensified heading into the Nov. 4 elections. The issue, arising now in interviews, candidate questionnaires and debates, is likely to become a major point of controversy in Sacramento in the run-up to 2016.
Of the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan statistical areas, many of the top performers have strong tech economies, led by the No. 2 metro area on our list, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, aka Silicon Valley, where real per capita GDP expanded 11.5% from 2010-13. Perhaps more surprising is the strong, tech-fuelled performance of No. 3 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Ore., where real per capita GDP grew 9.2%. The prime contributor has been the robust performance of late of Intel, the state’s largest private employer, which employs about 17,000 in Portland’s western suburbs around the town of Hillsboro, the company’s largest concentration of workers anywhere. . . Per capita growth in the energy states has been even more impressive. Placing first on our big cities list is Houston-the Woodlands-Sugarland, Texas, where per capita GDP rose 13.2% from 2010-13, a major achievement in a region whose population continues to grow rapidly. Zooming out to all 381 U.S. MSAs, no places come close to the two Texas oil towns that rank first and second overall, Midland (sizzling 38.8% growth since 2010) and Odessa (34.1%).
For the past decade, the U.S. shale boom has mostly passed by California, forcing oil refiners in the state to import expensive crude.
Now that’s changing as energy companies overcome opposition to forge ahead with rail depots that will get oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale.
Los Angeles County was home to 368,580 high-tech jobs in 2013, more than other regions that boast strong high-tech sectors, according to figures released Monday by Mayor Eric Garcetti and local economists.
In a story reported widely in northern California last month, agents from the Department of Industrial Relations showed up unannounced at the tiny Westover Winery, in Castro Valley, and slapped its owners with more than $115,000 in fines and assessments for using volunteer workers.
For decades, the German people have been among the world’s most environmentally conscious. The strongest sign of this has been the commitment of successive governments to Energiewende – or “energy change” – designed to make the economy predominantly dependent on renewable sources such as wind and solar power. Renewables today account for 23 per cent of electricity production, a figure set to rise to 65 per cent by 2035.
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This emphasis places burdens on households and businesses. The cost of the subsidies offered by the German government to green energy producers is passed on to consumers. Domestic energy bills are 48 per cent higher in Germany than the European average. Germany’s Mittelstand companies are even worse off. Their costs are twice the level facing their US rivals, many of whom benefit from cheap shale gas.
Los Angeles became the latest to join the movement when the city council approved a law on Sept. 24 requiring large hotels to pay employees at least $15.37 per hour and provide generous paid sick-leave benefits. But the ordinance includes a provision, increasingly common in similar ordinances, that permits unions to waive the requirements in collective bargaining.
. . . In 2013 the Long Beach Business Journal cited the collective-bargaining waiver built into the city’s $13 minimum wage law as an important factor in the unionization of two large hotels, the Hyatt Regency Long Beach and the Hyatt Pike Long Beach.
A drive to raise Los Angeles’s minimum wage to nearly twice the federal level would turn the country’s second-largest city into a prime test for whether high pay requirements help lift workers out of poverty or increase joblessness and blunt economic growth.
The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that total August exports of $198.5 billion and imports of $238.6 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $40.1 billion, down from $40.3 billion in July, revised. August exports were $0.4 billion more than July exports of $198.0 billion. August imports were $0.2 billion more than July imports of $238.3 billion.
U.S. job growth rebounded in September and the jobless rate slipped below 6%, suggesting the labor market is improving faster than previously thought and raising the prospect of an earlier-than-anticipated move by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.
Nonfarm payrolls grew a seasonally adjusted 248,000 last month, the fastest pace since June, the Labor Department said Friday. Revisions showed stronger job growth in prior months than previously estimated. The economy added 180,000 jobs in August instead of the initially reported 142,000. It created 243,000 in July, up from an earlier estimate of 212,000.
. . . Despite the latest improvement, the report indicated slack remains in the labor market and pointed to persistent problems facing the world’s largest economy. The share of Americans in the labor force fell again last month, hitting the lowest level in more than three decades. The labor-force participation rate fell to 62.7% from August’s 62.8%. Before the recession, the rate stood at 66%.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) is providing significant assistance with electric rates to 10 California employers so they can keep, expand or launch new operations in California rather than leave the state. In just over four months, the utility’s new Economic Development Rate, which was approved by state regulators this spring at PG&E’s request, has already saved or potentially added a total of 861 jobs in the state.
But that’s a problem in California, which has the strictest guidelines in the country. If even one rivet in a larger product is foreign, state law says it amounts to false advertising to call it U.S. made.
The result: A host of consumer lawsuits against manufacturers, including two against Lifetime in which people complained they had been duped by the company’s labeling. Makers of everything from door locks to hand tools have been sued in recent years. A maker of helium tanks designed to be used at children’s parties was sued because it started packing imported balloons with the equipment. Another case involved Mag Instruments, a California company that produces Maglite flashlights. It was sued for using small rubber rings and light bulbs from abroad.
. . . The two suits were ultimately certified as a single class action and were settled last spring in a state court in San Diego. The court awarded plaintiff’s attorneys $485,000, and Lifetime agreed to donate an additional $325,000 to charity and to offer discounts to consumers who had bought basketball equipment in the past. One of the two named plaintiffs was awarded $4,500, the other $3,500. The company says the bill for its legal team added an additional $535,000.
Spending on transportation has not kept up with our growing population and aging infrastructure for many years. But now, state funding is being cut in half, and this transportation fiscal cliff will only make matters worse.
The percentage of businesses who expect to trim full-time head counts is in the single digits, with business and professional services most likely to anticipate boosting hiring. More than a third said they’re planning to bring on additional part-time workers.
Small businesses in the Central Valley are increasingly finding themselves the targets of ADA claims by a handful of people who file lawsuit after lawsuit claiming discrimination. In fact, nearly 40 percent of the ADA lawsuits filed in the United States are in California. Tort reform advocates say that is largely because our state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act paves the way for bigger awards and California doesn’t require plaintiffs to demonstrate injury.