Domingo Avalos is all for clean air and blue skies. But he’s also in favor of paying the rent.
The port trucker says he logs lots of 12-14-hour workdays in his diesel rig, but he still has trouble making ends meet. Last week’s media event — starring the mayors of Los Angeles and Long Beach proudly proclaiming their march toward emissions-free ports — sent chills through Avalos and officials of his union.
Long Beach isn’t alone. About 40,000 residents across Los Angeles County are on the waiting list to obtain Section 8 vouchers, which means many people wait 11 years for a chance at an affordable housing option, officials said during a public hearing this week.
The report’s list of top states for net job creation in 2013 ranks Delaware first, with a job creation rate of 6.4 percent. North Dakota was second with a rate of 4.3 percent, followed by Montana (4.1 percent), California (4 percent) and Idaho (3.8 percent).
Overall cargo volumes at the Port of Los Angeles declined 2.5 percent on a year-over-year basis last month to more than 699,000 standard container units.
The way Levine sees it, California is becoming a “barbell economy” with relatively heavy job growth in high- and low-wage occupations while the middle gets squeezed. . . Levine contends California has become too expensive for employers to hire middle-wage workers. A lot of the blame for those high costs, he said, can be placed on the state environmental laws and other regulations that make California a more expensive state for doing business.
The extension comes after recent bottlenecks at the port due to a shortage of chassis (or trailers that hitch to trucks and hold containers) and the influx of bigger ships coming to the port. On Tuesday, about eight container ships were anchored off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach waiting to be unloaded, said Port of Long Beach spokesman Lee Peterson.
Forty-six years after Mercedes-Benz planted roots in Southern California, the luxury automaker is establishing its next phase of growth in Long Beach.
Southern California’s aerospace industry took another one on the chin when Boeing reached a tentative agreement with a machinists union to build the new 777X airliner in the Seattle area instead of at other possible sites, including Long Beach.
Company: KaiserCA Net Job Gain/Loss: -550Reason: LayoffCity/Region Losing Jobs: Several cities in Los Angeles CountyNotes: Includes 84 non-union employees and up to 466 additional union employees