The 2007-2009 recession hit California very hard. Only recently—in mid 2014—did California return to the number of jobs it had before the recession.
In 2012, for perhaps the first time in state history, the top 1% of the state's tax filers paid slightly over half of the state's personal income taxes.
California's economy ranks among the largest on earth. As of 2013, it was larger than some of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized economies, such as Canada and Italy.