Sales at retailers and restaurants decreased a seasonally adjusted 0.9% in December from a month earlier, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. But that drop, the largest since last January, likely overstates the severity of the pullback. Some economists blamed technical factors such as seasonal adjustments, warning about potential revisions to the data or a rebound in coming months.
Strong financial results, fueled by bullish stock markets and income-producing real estate, helped boost CalPERS’ funding level to 77% at the end of the 2014 fiscal year, up from 69.8% on June 30, 2013.
But, as Brown warns in his proposed 2015-16 budget, “economic expansions do not last forever. In the post-war period, the average expansion has been about five years. The current expansion has already exceeded the average by nine months. While there are few signs of immediate contraction, another recession is inevitable.”
U.S. employers advertised the most job openings in nearly 14 years in November, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That suggests businesses are determined to keep adding staff because they are confident strong economic growth will create more demand for their goods and services.
The earnings gap between people with a college degree and those with no education beyond high school has been growing since the late 1970s. Since 2000, however, the gap has grown more for those who have earned a post-graduate degree as well. The divergence between workers with college degrees and those with graduate degrees may be one manifestation of rising labor market polarization, which benefits those earning the highest and the lowest wages relatively more than those in the middle of the wage distribution.
They are the top vacation hoarders in a state bureaucracy with a lot of them. Tens of thousands of state employees have exceeded the official limit of 80 banked vacation days, leaving the state on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Gov. Brown wants state workers to begin paying half the cost of their future retiree health care — a big change for workers making no payments for coverage that can pay 100 percent of the premium for a retiree and 90 percent for their dependents.
The governor also wants state workers to be given the option of a lower-cost health insurance plan with higher deductibles. The state would contribute to a tax-deferred savings account to help cover out-of-pocket costs not covered by the plan.
The CBP’s report shows that even with increased state revenues and a continuing economic recovery that has yet to reach many Californians, the Governor’s proposed budget prioritizes fiscal austerity over investing in broadly shared prosperity. The Governor’s proposal does reflect a focus on policy changes enacted in prior years — such as California’s new K-12 funding formula and the state’s implementation of federal health care reform — that move the state forward in important ways. Yet, while the Governor’s proposal includes long-term plans for paying down budgetary debt and saving for a rainy day, it does not present a similar vision for tackling California’s biggest challenges: still-high levels of unemployment and poverty, widening income inequality, and a safety net severely weakened by years of funding cuts.
School-construction and home-building groups Monday launched an effort to qualify a $9 billion school bond for the November 2016 ballot, only days after Gov. Jerry Brown released a budget plan that minimized the state’s role in paying for building new classrooms and modernizing existing ones.
Despite signals that his administration was ready to undertake a sweeping change for how new schools are paid for and older ones updated, Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled Friday a far less substantial facilities program, pushing the larger policy debate off for another time.
A contract dispute between commercial producers and Teamsters Local 399 has escalated, raising the prospect of the first Hollywood strike by the union in nearly two decades..
In reality, however, California’s path back remains slow and treacherous. California Lutheran University economist Bill Watkins, like other economists, is somewhat bullish on the state’s short-run situation, but suggests that the highly unequal recovery, particularly for the middle class, could prove problematic over time.
Although lawmakers cut general fund expenditures by $16.6 billion during the recession from 2007-08 to 2011-12, they shifted money from funds to keep many of the programs operating.
Its official poverty rate was roughly in line with the nation as a whole, but the Census Bureau’s alternative measure, which took into account all forms of income and the cost of living, found nearly a quarter of Californians to be impoverished, by far the highest rate of any state.
The idea, he said, is to broaden the sales tax to possibly include legal work, advertising, Internet usage, dry cleaning and other services. At the same time, he would lower the personal and corporate income tax and even boost the minimum wage.