California’s Competitiveness

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…

Robotics manufacturing startup Made in Space is moving its Mountain View headquarters to Jacksonville, Florida, becoming the latest Bay Area company to move its operations out of California. The company will invest more than $3 million in a new 20,000-square-feet headquarters where it already has added more than 50 jobs in the past year. The company said it will maintain a presence in the Silicon Valley to “support additional technology programs and strategic relationships with industry partners.” Mountain View businesses…