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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.

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.

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.

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%.

Without quick action by Congress, the U.S. Transportation Department may begin scaling back or halting work on thousands of roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects at the height of the construction season this July, when the nation’s Highway Trust Fund is expected to run dry.

The move is part of a sea change in American manufacturing: After three decades of an exodus of production to China and other low-wage countries, companies have sharply curtailed moves abroad. Some, like Generac, have begun to return manufacturing to U.S. shores.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration is rolling out a new $750-million program that offers some modest financial incentives to encourage California employers to stay put and help persuade out-of-state companies to move here.

Musk said the automaker is working through a number of issues with Gov. Jerry Brown’s staff but fears the company would not get the various environmental and other permits in time to get the factory built and running quickly . . . “We can’t afford to wait a year or more for permits to proceed,” Musk said. “If we don’t have the gigafactory online when we have the vehicle capacity online we would be in deep trouble.”

What’s happening on the red carpet mirrors what’s happening on film sets and TV soundstages. New York had a record number of film and TV projects last year and is on track to do the same in 2014, state officials say. Credit goes to generous financial incentives, experienced crews that rival Hollywood’s best and friendly (some might say star-struck) politicians.

What California should be doing is curing the disease by reforming the tax system, stabilizing it and ridding us of the volatility. Broaden the tax base and bank less on the rich, whose incomes fluctuate wildly during periods of boom and bust.

There were 25,198 units of housing permitted in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, according to figures out Thursday from the Census Bureau. That’s up from about 17,500 in 2012 and triple the amount seen at the bottom of the housing market in 2009. But it’s still behind the 30,000-plus pace seen in the housing heyday of the mid-2000s.

Fillmore & Western Railway Co. may be forced to shut down as a result of a legal dispute with the Ventura County Transportation Commission, which recently filed a lawsuit to evict the company.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed into law a 10-year exemption from state taxes for certain property used for space flight operations in California.

Toyota Motor Corp. plans to move large numbers of jobs from its sales and marketing headquarters in Torrance to suburban Dallas, according to a person familiar with the automaker’s plans.