First Solar Inc. intends to lay off more than one-quarter of its staff and to restructure operations to focus on newer solar modules, which will lead to at least $500 million in charges and push the company into the red this year.
The study, which surveyed businesses with revenues from $100,000 to $5 million, showed 47 percent of entrepreneurs believed the Los Angeles economy would improve in the next year – up from 40 percent in a spring survey. Of those surveyed, 39 percent felt the national economy would improve, a 10 percent gain from the spring.
An official revision of CalPERS’ investment assumptions would place significant pressure on government spending, with public employee pension obligations consuming a larger portion of taxpayer dollars. That could, in turn, squeeze other government programs.
It’s trying to persuade Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration to give its members a larger raise than its initial offer of 12 percent over four years.
Just as we’ve started to get a handle on the ways online sharing platforms such as Uber and Airbnb are changing the nature of work in the U.S., it appears growth on the platforms may be slowing.
What’s missing are consumers, however. Auto makers are suffering from a glut of U.S. sedan and coupe inventory amid strong demand for light-trucks. The coming addition of electric-vehicle capacity could worsen that oversupply if shoppers continue to prefer pickups and sport-utility vehicles to plug-in cars.
California is on the road to a bifurcated, almost feudal, society, divided by geography, race and class. As is clear from the most recent Internal Revenue Service data, it’s not just the poor and ill-educated, as Brown apologists suggest, but, rather, primarily young families and the middle-aged, who are leaving. What will be left is a state dominated by a growing, but relatively small, upper class, many of them boomers; young singles and a massive, growing, increasingly marginalized “precariat” of low wage, often occasional, workers.
If there is anything that just about every Californian agrees with, it is that it costs too much to live in the state. Over the last few years, the price of buying a home or renting an apartment has become so burdensome that it pervades almost every issue, from the state’s elevated poverty rate to the debate about multimillion-dollar tear-downs to the lines of recreational vehicles parked on Silicon Valley side streets.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority filed a waiver request earlier this week with the Federal Railroad Administration that would exempt the authority from the “buy America” requirements of federal law because no U.S. passenger train manufacturers currently exist.
Voters in 184 K-12 and community college districts throughout California considered local school bonds worth more than $25 billion – and approved $23 billion of them.
Eureka Landing will house around 200 employees and manufacture dashboard subassemblies for Tesla. The project will be finished later this month and SAS will move in January, after improvements are made in the HVAC and electrical systems.
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.
“Twenty million Americans now have health coverage because of Obamacare. A full quarter of them are in California. And most of them are covered by Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program. Right now, the federal government shares the cost of Medicaid with the states, no matter how many people are enrolled. But Trump wants to cap that funding, and just give states one fixed grant.”
The city and county have approved the formation of Valley Clean Energy Alliance, which will be a nonprofit joint powers authority local energy provider. The formation of the Valley Clean Energy Alliance means that customers can decide what kind of electric generation they prefer, and they can potentially shop for price.
Job gains from opening establishments as a percentage of overall private-sector employment dropped to 1% in the first quarter of 2016, the lowest level recorded since the Labor Department began the data series in 1992, and half what it was at its peak.