Blogs of the LA Area Chamber

Toyota is moving 3,000 high-paying jobs from California to Texas over the next three years. Thousands of L.A. County families will be directly impacted by this job loss and many other support businesses and their employees will also feel the pain. The ripple effect will go on and on, including hundreds of charities and nonprofit organizations that Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. has generously supported.

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A major component of health care reform that has rolled out in each state is the health insurance marketplace. Each marketplace is operated by that state’s government, the federal government, or a partnership between the state and federal governments. California’s marketplace, known as Covered California, is a state-run marketplace. It serves both individuals looking for health plan coverage for themselves and their families, as well as qualifying small businesses looking to offer coverage to their employees through the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP).

With the implementation of SHOP there is now the opportunity to offer choice when it comes to plan selection for employees, along with a more simplified administrative process (single bill for coverage) for employers. Open enrollment for both small businesses and individuals through Covered California began October 1, 2013. Though open enrollment for the individual marketplace recently closed on March 31, 2014, we feel this is an appropriate time to refocus education and enrollment efforts for small businesses, the marketplace for which (SHOP) has no open enrollment deadline.

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Last Friday, the State Employment Development Department issued its employment numbers for March. The good news is that employment increased once again in California and Los Angeles County. The bad news is that California still has 84,300 fewer jobs than it had at the start of the Great Recession, and L.A. County has 75,200 fewer jobs, almost 90 percent of the State total.  

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A job is like a fire, providing energy, light, heat and sustenance to the life of the person who holds the flame. It illuminates the vision ahead to see a brighter future of caring for oneself and our families. Last week, the Los Angeles region received the promise of many more lights with The Boeing Co.’s announcement that it would soon be moving 1,000 high paying skilled engineering jobs to our communities.

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Last Thursday morning, former President Bill Clinton was at L.A. City Hall with Mayor Eric Garcetti to discuss strategies to finance economic development and to promote job growth, climate mitigation and resiliency through 21st century infrastructure. Clinton was joined by the West Coast Infrastructure Exchange and spent much of his time touting the opportunity to use public-private partnerships to advance infrastructure projects in Los Angeles and California.  

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Last week, in the first step of what will be a long legislative journey, Assembly Bill 1839, which will retain movie and TV production jobs in California, passed its first committee with a unanimous 7-0 vote. We applaud the members of the Assembly Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism, and Internet Media Committee for their vision, but none of us can stop for even one television commercial to rest on this initial victory. 

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