California’s Competitiveness

The Specialty Food Association, which hosts an annual winter food show, announced this week that it is moving its three-day 2022 event from its traditional home at the Moscone Center in San Francisco to the Las Vegas Convention Center. Bill Lynch, president of the association, said: “We are excited to be partnering with a premier trade show destination like Las Vegas, which has been the leader in the return of in-person events.” The San Francisco Business Times reported September 22…

Two California-based companies announced this week that they are moving some or all of their operations to lower-cost states: real estate referral company Homelight is moving its headquarters from San Francisco to Scottsdale, Arizona, and knife manufacturer Cangshan Cutlery is leaving Chino for a new facility in Leander, Texas. The San Francisco Business Times reported August 24 that Scottsdale is now Homelight’s largest employment center, and the company also is expanding in Colorado. Homelight Chief Executive Officer Drew Uher said…

Johnson & Johnson is permanently closing a South San Francisco facility that houses several divisions and is relocating 73 jobs out of California, the San Francisco Business Times reported March 30. “The New Jersey consumer and pharmaceutical giant said it will offer relocation to all affected employees to Titusville, New Jersey, and those who do not opt to relocate will be laid off,” the Business Times stated. “The largest group of job relocations will occur at Actelion Pharmaceuticals US Inc.,…

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said January 12 he is “seriously concerned” about California’s future because of the high costs of operating a business in this state. The mayor of the 10th-largest city in the United States said his concern stems from California-based companies deciding to put their fastest-growing business units elsewhere “because it is simply too expensive, too challenging, too much red tape to be growing here.” Liccardo made the comments during an online event hosted by Commercial Real…

Business software and services company Oracle is moving its corporate headquarters from the Silicon Valley area to Austin, Texas, to provide workers “with more flexibility about where and how they work,” the company said December 11. “Depending on their role, this means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part time or all the time,” Oracle said. The company opened a facility in Austin in 2018, but indicated that…

Several California-based employers – including one of the Silicon Valley’s founding companies – recently announced plans to move operations to lower-cost states. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is moving its headquarters out of the Bay Area to Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. The company has approximately 60,000 employees globally, including approximately 2,400 in the Bay Area. “I welcome Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s new global headquarters to the Houston area,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement posted on YouTube. The governor…

Pabst Blue Ribbon announced this month that it is moving its headquarters out of Los Angeles and into San Antonio, Texas. Along with closing its Los Angeles headquarters, the company closed its Dallas offices to move the employees to San Antonio. The company already has 60 to 65 employees in San Antonio and plans to increase its employment to 115 to 120 employees when fully staffed. Pabst, the seventh-largest beer company in the United States, did not receive any government…

Private-sector employers with 50 or more workers in California have eliminated 375,703 jobs since July 2014, according to data updated February 10 by the California Employment Development Department (EDD). During the first seven and a half months of the 2019-20 fiscal year, more than 52,000 workers received layoff notices, according to the EDD data. State law requires employers of 50 or more workers to provide workers and government officials with a 60-day notice when they are going to lay off…

During the same week that San Francisco Mayor London Breed endorsed the split-roll property tax initiative, newspapers reported that two more Bay Area employers – Macy’s and Shutterfly – are moving area jobs to other states with lower business costs. As part of a national reorganization, Macy’s is closing its offices in San Francisco and laying off hundreds of workers in the city, and will consolidate its technology operations in Atlanta and New York City. In a letter to the…

Two San Francisco Bay Area companies this week announced they are moving their headquarters out of California. XOJet, a private aviation company founded in Brisbane in 2006, is moving its home office to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, while technology company QuestionPro is moving its headquarters from San Francisco to Austin, Texas. The San Francisco Business Times reported that XOJet was “once one of the Bay Area’s largest private companies before it was acquired in 2018.” The company is subleasing 25,775 square…