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Leading the nation in job growth in 2013, Texas likewise added more houses than any other state and is host to seven of the 15 fastest-growing cities in the country, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday.

The Lone Star State added about 250,000 jobs last year, about 20,000 ahead of California. About 118,000 housing units went up in Texas in 2013, or 25% of the 467,000 erected nationwide.

The Texas growth has been fueled by expansions in nearly every industry, including technology companies in Austin, financial firms in Dallas and oil drilling operations in the outskirts.

The Bay State, which some boosters call “Hollywood East,” has become a fast-growing hub for film and TV production, joining dozens of states that have cut into a business once concentrated in the Golden State.

Gov. Jerry Brown said Wednesday that California is a “job creation engine,” defending his administration’s handling of the economy and state budget in a forceful election year speech.

The drought could cost the region’s farm industry $1.7 billion in 2014 and cause more than 14,500 workers to lose their jobs, according to preliminary results of the study, which also predicts that Central Valley irrigators will only get two-thirds of their normal water deliveries.

“By Autor’s calculations, if you’d taken all the income gains that flowed to the 1 percent over the last 35 years and redistributed them evenly to everyone else in the economy, that would have delivered an extra $7,100 a year to every household in the bottom 99 percent. That’s a lot of money. But it’s not as much as the growing pay differential between workers who went to college and those who didn’t.

In the last 35 years, he calculates, the so-called college premium – the boost in your paycheck from earning a diploma – increased by $28,000, adjusted for inflation. So if you took that entire increase and redistributed it to non-college workers, you’d be giving them a raise four times the size of the 1 percent redistribution.”

But the Toyota relocation is just an anecdote and does not paint a full picture of what is happening economically in the state – thus, it is unlikely to point to a cure for what ails California. The real solutions to the state’s problems are actually quite simple, but unfortunately don’t appeal to politicians, pundits or lobbyists. Unless something changes in that calculus, the state will continue to legislate largely by anecdote rather than analysis, ultimately failing to help California grow.

The increased revenue, spurred in part by a healthier stock market, will be about $2.5 billion more through the next budget year than the governor’s fianance advisors projected, nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor said in a report Friday.

Without the dramatic revenue dips or spikes of years past, and with scant new policy proposals, this year’s May Revision was about as exciting as a jar of pudding.

But one number jumped out. By next year, the state expects 11 million Californians – 30% of the population to receive Medi-Cal benefits.

Without the dramatic revenue dips or spikes of years past, and with scant new policy proposals, this year’s May Revision was about as exciting as a jar of pudding.

But one number jumped out. By next year, the state expects 11 million Californians – 30% of the population to receive Medi-Cal benefits.

California’s unemployment rate dropped below 8% last month for the first time in nearly six years as employers put the state on the verge of recovering all of the jobs lost during the Great Recession . . . California’s unemployment rate remains the fourth-highest in the country, behind Rhode Island at 8.3%, Nevada at 8% and Illinois at 7.9%.

There is little doubt that the bill’s sponsor, State Senator Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) is well meaning in his effort. But well meaning is not the same as effective—and this bill, unfortunately, will not be remotely successful in dealing with the state’s affordable housing problem. It’s a shame California lawmakers can’t or won’t support meaningful reforms—primarily altering the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)—instead of offering more band-aids.

Port spokesman Phillip Sanfield said the jump was in part due to an improving economy. He also said retailers appeared to be importing holiday season goods earlier this year to cover their bases should port labor negotiations fail and affect shipping.

The defense contractor announced Thursday that over the next two years it will close its facility on Ruffin Road, which employs 530 people. The facility is the base for the company’s division that manufactures airline auxiliary power units.

Thomas Piketty has recently attracted widespread attention for his claim that capitalism will now lead inexorably to an increasing inequality of income and wealth unless there are radical changes in taxation. Although his book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” has been praised by those who advocate income redistribution, his thesis rests on a false theory of how wealth evolves in a market economy, a flawed interpretation of U.S. income-tax data, and a misunderstanding of the current nature of household wealth.

An analysis released this week by real estate site Trulia defines “middle class” in the San Jose metro area as a household earning $94,077 annually — more than double the median income in Miami and $10,000 higher than the San Francisco metro area.