Daily Business Report: Tuesday, July 15 2025
Why one union became one of the most pro-housing voices in California
By Jeanne Kuang & Ben Christopher | CalMatters
When Gov. Gavin Newsom last week signed the biggest effort in years to undo red tape for housing development, he singled out one group for credit.
“This is the third of the last four years we’ve been together signing landmark housing reforms, and it simply would not have happened without the Carpenters,” Newsom said.
The California Conference of Carpenters has emerged in recent years as one of the most influential voices on housing in Sacramento. The new law rolls back California’s landmark environmental review law to exempt urban apartment developments, an idea once considered a legislative third rail. It’s the most significant yet in a string of bills intended to boost housing production that lawmakers have passed with the union’s help.
How Palomar Health Plans to Turn Its Finances Around
By Tigist Layne| Voice of San Diego
The region’s largest public healthcare district is in financial trouble. Now, officials at Palomar Health have their sights set on a comeback.
As Palomar grapples with significant financial loss, the plan for the hospital system’s operations doesn’t include service cuts or layoffs. Instead, it leans heavily on cost-efficiency and growth through attracting more privately insured patients. Palomar Health, a public healthcare system that operates Palomar Medical Centers in Escondido and Poway, has faced financial declines across its operations for the past couple of years.
In 2023, Voice of San Diego was the first to report that Palomar Health’s financial position was rapidly worsening, and it’s not the only one. Hospitals across the country are facing decreasing patient volume and less overall revenue.
New Economic Study Finds California’s $20 Fast Food Minimum Wage Caused 18,000 Job Losses
By Katy Grimes| Calfornia Globe
“New data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics was released Thursday, revealing a staggering 36,565 fast food jobs have been lost since September 2023 when the $20 per hour minimum wage law, AB 1228, was signed into law,” the Globe reported in June.
There is yet another new study out, this one is by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge Massachusetts:
In unadjusted data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, we find that employment in California’s fast food sector declined by 2.7 percent relative to employment in the fast food sector elsewhere in the United States from September 2023 through September 2024. Adjusting for pre- AB 1228 trends increases this differential decline to 3.2 percent, while netting out the equivalent employment changes in non-minimum-wage-intensive industries further increases the decline. Our median estimate translates into a loss of 18,000 jobs in California’s fast food sector relative to the counterfactual.
