On Feb. 4, GenCorp said it would cut 5 percent of its nationwide workforce to gain efficiencies from the merger. At 5 percent, the cuts worked out to 225 employees across the country, and it turns out they are mostly in California.
Increasing the minimum wage would have two principal effects on low-wage workers. Most of them would receive higher pay that would increase their family’s income, and some of those families would see their income rise above the federal poverty threshold. But some jobs for low-wage workers would probably be eliminated, the income of most workers who became jobless would fall substantially, and the share of low-wage workers who were employed would probably fall slightly.
In all but forcing out fossil-fuel firms, California is shedding one of its historic core industries. Not long ago, California was home to a host of top 10 energy firms – ARCO, Getty Oil, Union Oil, Oxy and Chevron; in 1970, oil firms constituted the five largest industrial companies in the state. Now, only Chevron, which has been reducing its headcount in Northern California and is clearly shifting its emphasis to Texas, will remain.
Last week, the San Francisco Business Journal reported that Charles Schwab SCHW +0.34% is planning on moving “a significant number of San Francisco-based jobs” out of the state over the next three to five years. Charles Schwab’s San Francisco roots date back to its founding four decades ago, with the firm ranking as the 47th-largest employer in the Bay Area. The company employs almost 2,700 people in the region, and has a company-wide workforce of 13,600. Observers close to the situation blame the city’s extreme payroll tax and high cost of doing business in California as the reasons for the company’s exodus.
State Sen. Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) on Wednesday revived a proposal to tax oil pumped from the ground in California, saying the $2 billion it would raise annually could help restore the affordability of higher education and improve social services and parks.
On February 11th, 2014, The Solar Foundation released its first-ever district-level “deep dive” into solar employment in California, Arizona, and Minnesota. The research behind these three seminal reports (linked below) was performed using the same survey-based methods developed for our award-winning National Solar Jobs Census series. In addition to the release of these reports, TSF provided updated estimates of solar employment in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The TechAmerica Foundation proudly presents our 2014 edition of Tech Trade in the States: A State-by-State Overview of International Trade of Tech Goods. It provides 2012 data on tech trade at the national level and export data for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The report also provides an estimate as to the number of jobs that are supported by export activities.
Every major economic sector in the state will need to play an increasing role in this effort. Success will require the creation of new policies in some sectors, and expanding and refining existing policies in others.
We also find that the plan raises some important policy issues related to the financing and maintenance of state infrastructure and serves as a valuable starting point for legislative discussions. However, we note that the plan does not include some key information and suggest some changes that could make the plan more helpful to the Legislature. In addition, given the size of the state’s infrastructure investments and their long-term nature, we recommend that the Legislature take a more active role in considering infrastructure in a comprehensive way.
Raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2016 would cost the economy 500,000 jobs, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
After nearly a century here, Westwood oil giant Occidental Petroleum Corp. is moving its headquarters to Houston.
Unusually cold weather in January chilled factories’ output and froze up some mining operations but boosted utility consumption as Americans huddled for warmth. Total industrial production fell a seasonally adjusted 0.3% in January, the Federal Reserve said Friday. It was the first decline for the reading since July.
Yet taken together, the federal standards effectively cancel out the California standard. Instead of promoting fuel reduction as intended, the California standard allows for the production of less-efficient vehicles, while facilitating a massive transfer of cash via credit trading. It also forms a de facto industrial policy that sends us down a path toward electric vehicles that may or may not be the best technological or environmental choice for the future.
The biggest issue facing the American economy, and our political system, is the gradual descent of the middle class into proletarian status. This process, which has been going on intermittently since the 1970s, has worsened considerably over the past five years, and threatens to turn this century into one marked by downward mobility.
An ordinance soon to be introduced in the City Council is expected to require 87 large hotels to pay a $15.37-an-hour “living wage,” nearly double California’s current $8-an-hour minimum.