from Hacker News

Job growth is booming across the U.S. but not in California. Here's why

by valiant-comma on 3/10/24, 4:36 PM with 75 comments

• by bugglebeetle on 3/10/24, 5:38 PM

  > “The reason why Texas and Florida are doing well and California isn’t, it’s the cost of housing and high taxes,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “We have lost a lot of small businesses.”

  This former is the crux of the problem: California entered into a suicide pact with real estate speculators in the 70s, from which it seems entirely unwilling to extricate itself. It’s an incredibly destructive drag on the state’s entire economy that prevents new business formation and labor mobility.

• by unquietwiki on 3/10/24, 5:50 PM

  Living in SoCal still offers distinct advantages in terms of civil rights, a social safety net, and access to a vast number of small and large businesses (for both work and services). The entry-level job thing is compounded by requirements for degrees and experience that fully expect folks to down-skill to lower-wage roles.

  One factor that looms large is the gig economy: Uber/Lyft/DoorDash/etc. They've become a lynchpin in providing delivery services that restaurants have come to rely on, while hitting both them and consumers with large fees. Pizza delivery is being shifted from actual drivers to gig workers, to avoid a recent law change requiring more pay; this has become an act of cost-externalization, and further increases the dependency on the gig workers. And overall the gig workers aren't necessarily seeing gains from this change, since their employers fight tooth and nail on efforts to increase their pay.

  This doesn't even begin to cover what's happening in the agricultural and creative industries; the latter of which I believe has been covered writ-large in this space.

• by VirusNewbie on 3/10/24, 6:34 PM

  Prop 13 is just a huge handout to real estate investors. There’s also the fact that mortgages are no recourse, so people have even more reason to engage in RE speculation. I’m not exaggerating when I say many of my close friends own a handful of properties as their main investment choice. How can you have anything close to a free market when speculation is rewarded so much?

  I’m not saying prop 13 shouldn’t apply to primary residence, but it’s insane investors can just sit on land and use that as leverage.

• by freitzkriesler2 on 3/10/24, 7:41 PM

  Until California breaks the back of its landed gentry class (real estate investors and NIMBYs), job growth will remain nill. You can't pay 75k and expect people to live hand to mouth.

• by ramesh31 on 3/10/24, 5:48 PM

  California is full, plain and simple. The people who live there and control the land have decided so, both implicitly and explicitly.

• by badrabbit on 3/10/24, 6:33 PM

  California as a whole is a great place to live but I have no idea how people manage.

  My biggest hangup isn't jobs but housing. You have to be a millionaire to afford a small house far away from any city. And if you decide to rent instead, then even making 200k+ you are unlikely to afford a house at all. By the time you save up a million, housing prices increasing and inflation will push you back to square one. If you go through the debt route, interest and monthly payments will drain you dry for the rest of your life (unless your plan is to start your real life at 55+). I feel like high speed railways to desirable places like cali to affordable states will sove a lot of issues.

• by ldjkfkdsjnv on 3/10/24, 5:59 PM

  Correction, over 90% of job growth is going to foreign born workers