California unemployment rises in September as forecast predicts slow jobs growth

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California lost jobs for the fourth consecutive month in September — and it’s expected to add only 62,000 new jobs next year as high taxes drag on business formation, according to a report released Thursday.The annual Chapman University economic forecast released Thursday found that the state’s job growth totaled just 2% from the second quarter of 2022 to the second quarter of this year, ranking it 48th among all states.That matches California’s low ranking on the Tax Foundation’s 2024 State Business Tax Climate Index, which measures the rate of taxes and how they are assessed, according to the Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research report by the Orange, Calif., school.The state also experienced a net population outflow of more than 1 million residents from 2021 to 2023, with the top five destinations being states with zero or very low state income taxes: Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho and Florida, the report noted.Business Thousands of workers have been laid off this year in Hollywood and Silicon Valley as AI shakes up the media and tech industries amid other economic challenges.What’s more, the average adjusted gross income for those leaving California was $134,000 in 2022, while for those entering it was $113,000, according to the most recent IRS data on net income flows cited by the report.“High relative state taxes not only drive out jobs, but they also drive out people,” said the report, which expects just a 0.3% increase in California jobs next year leading to the 62,000 net gain.More unsettling, the report said, was a “sharp decline” in the number of companies and other advanced industry concerns established in California relative to other states, in such sectors as technology, software, aerospace and medical products.California accounted for 17.5% of all such establishments in the fourth quarter of 2018, but that dropped to 14.9% in the first quart...