Updating the California Necessities Index

Aug 14, 2025 - To summarize, in Figure  3 , we provide relative assessments of each option using our criteria, dividing them into “green ” for the best measures on each criterion, “yellow ” for measures where some deficiency is identified, and “red ” for measures we judge to be significantly deficient.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5065

The 2025-26 California Spending Plan: Other Provisions

Oct 16, 2025 - Relocation of Red Mountain Communications Facilities. The budget provides a net increase of $23  million one-time General Fund for the construction phase of the Relocation of Red Mountain Communications Site project.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5081

How Will Aging Baby Boomers Affect Future Property Tax Revenues?

Jun 20, 2017 - Cities in this group —such as Hemet, Redding, and Richmond —have a significant amount of older homeowners but have experienced less home price growth in prior years. Potential revenues gains are more moderate for these cities.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3693

Building Reserves to Prepare for a Recession

Mar 7, 2018 - By most measures, the recession of the early 1990s was more severe than the dot ‑com bust in the early 2000s. For example, unemployment in California reached 9. 7  p ercent in mid ‑ to late ‑1992, but peaked at 6. 9  p ercent after the dot ‑com bust.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3769

Volatility of California’s Personal Income Tax Structure

Sep 28, 2017 - The compound annual growth rate over this four ‑year period was 5.2  percent, as shown by the red line. The growth rate in 2011 was 6.8  percent, which is 1.6  percentage points above the compound annual growth rate, so the annual deviation for 2011 is 1.6.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3703

The 2018-19 May Revision: LAO Economic Outlook

May 12, 2018 - The typical PE ratio since 1990 is 21 (19 if the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s is excluded). Similar to the price-to-earnings ratio, the home price-to-rent ratio is used to gauge if home prices are in line with underlying demand for housing.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3829

Fixing Unemployment Insurance

Dec 2, 2024 - During the phase ‑in period, the state also entered the dot ‑com recession. These two cost pressures absorbed the remaining flexibility in the state ’s UI tax system. As  shown in Figure  4 , the state began this period in Schedule C but quickly moved to Schedule F+, the highest tax schedule, where it has remained since.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4943

Improving California’s Unemployment Insurance Program

Aug 8, 2022 - (The small red area of the figure represents this smaller fraud estimate.) EDD Puts Significant Focus on Fraud Prevention. Due to a concern that workers may lie to get UI payments, EDD ’s practices have evolved over time to meticulously scrutinize worker eligibility.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4615

Managing California’s Cash

Sep 3, 2019 - After a period of relative calm in the mid ‑ and late ‑1990s, California faced another series of years with acute budget problems following the dot ‑com bust and ensuing recession. Although the dot ‑com bust was relatively mild in economic terms, it hit the California budget —which is particularly reliant on the Bay Area ’s technology sector —especially hard.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4092

The 2017-18 Budget: Governor's Gann Limit Proposal

Mar 2, 2017 - As revenues surged during the dot ‑com boom of the late 1990s, however, the state approached the limit. The state had excess revenues in 1999 ‑00, but because appropriations were under the limit in 2000 ‑01, additional Proposition  98 spending and taxpayer rebates were not required.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3596