News

L.A. County employers shed 78,700 jobs in January, fueled primarily by a steep decline in seasonal retail positions that were eliminated at the end of the holiday shopping season.. . . The Inland Empire weathered a decline of 19,900 jobs in January, a sharp contrast to the 9,600 that were added the previous month. The region’s jobless rate also shot up to 5.6 percent from 5.1 percent in December but it still landed below the year-ago rate of 5.9 percent.

But the 11-2 vote by the South Coast Air Quality Management District board left intact controversial plans for pollution reduction from the region’s ports and warehouse centers to be achieved through voluntary compliance with industry.

The hiring is expected to continue through mid-April and comes as the company prepares for spring, its busiest time of the year.

My trusty spreadsheet tells me that in 2016 an average 47.2 percent of households in the L.A.-O.C. metropolitan area lived in homes they owned vs. 49.1 percent in 2015. In both years, those percentages were the lowest ownership rates among the nation’s 75 largest metro areas.

L.A. County’s manufacturing sector has suffered massive job losses over the last decade, but a new report points to worse news — those positions have been replaced by jobs that pay less than half as much.

Gas prices in the Los Angeles/Orange County region stood near $3 a gallon Monday while they topped $2.90 in the Inland Empire — up more than 50 cents from a year ago as OPEC production cutbacks worked their way to local pumps. . . It’s normal for gas prices in Southern California to increase this time of year as the state switches over to summer blend gasoline. The gas is 8-12 cents a gallon more expensive to make than winter blend gasoline, according to Automobile Club of Southern California spokesman Jeffrey Spring. Down refineries also cause gas prices to rise in the spring.

California union membership grew with the state job market, up 65,000, or 2.6 percent, in a year. Nationally, it’s a different story: Unions had 14.6 million members in 2016, down 237,000, or a dip of 1.6 percent.

Reflecting the popularity of California’s revised film incentive program, location shoots in the Los Angeles area jumped 6.2 percent last year, led by record feature film production, an industry tracker said Tuesday.

The study notes that the 313,700 workers who were employed in 2015 fell 23.7 percent, or nearly 98,000, below the number who were employed at the industry’s peak in 2006.

“Los Angeles County has added more than 475,000 jobs since the depths of the Great Recession, and it’s expected to gain another 334,200 jobs by 2020, according to a report released Thursday. But most of those jobs will be low-paying positions, the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. reported at the seventh annual Southern California Economic Summit . . . “We have 90,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than we did in 2007 and those were jobs that paid around $52,000 a year back then,” Cooper said. “We’ve added 90,000 additional food service jobs since 2007, but those are jobs that have an average annual wage of $20,000.””

Homebuyers needed at least a six-figure income to afford the median-priced house in Orange and Los Angeles counties over the summer, the California Association of Realtors reported Wednesday.

The Los Angeles Unified school board on Tuesday refused to renew three Magnolia schools serving 1,400 sixth- through 12th-grade students, including Magnolia Science Academy campuses in Reseda and Van Nuys, as recommended by district staff. Hundreds of students, staff and other Magnolia supporters wore orange T-shirts at Tuesday’s meeting, with some holding signs that read “I stand for Magnolia” and “Stop School Closing.” . . . Both the Magnolia schools in the Valley were in the top 3 percent of all high schools in the nation, according to an April issue of U.S. News & World Report.

In a memo to Mermell last Thursday, Finance Director Matthew Hawkesworth said he had ruled in his capacity as tax administrator that the city would tax streaming services at the same rate as cable services through a new interpretation of an existing Utility User Tax passed in 2008. . . Pasadena wouldn’t be the first local government to tax streaming services. Chicago and the state of Pennsylvania already get revenue from those types of subscriptions.

According to the Air Resources Board, less than 20 percent went to projects within our six-county region, even though we account for 48 percent of the state’s population.

Cities that provide generous health care and other perks to their employee — sometimes nearly twice the amount of base salaries and largely unknown to taxpayers — were slapped Tuesday in an analysis released by the nonprofit group Transparent California.