Why is California losing good jobs to other states? It's not rocket science

FOR A CENTURY, it worked, and brilliantly. The “California model” rested on massive investments in higher education, development of industrial zones in places such as the South Bay and Silicon Valley, and persistent upgrading of basic infrastructure.

- JOEL KOTKIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

MARIO TAMA Getty Images

AFTER LAUNCHING from Vandenberg Space Force Base in June, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaks across the skies over Pasadena.

Yet the system that made California dynamic and prosperous for so long is now broken and backward-looking. The state still provides ample opportunities for technological and financial elites but leaves behind a broad spectrum of the middle and working classes.

This failure is reflected in the state’s poverty and unemployment rates (both the highest in the nation), and its tepid job growth. Meanwhile other states — Texas, Florida, Arizona, the Carolinas and Tennessee, for example — have copied the California model and they have done it, as Californians once did, based on the goal of lifting up all classes. Long reactionary in their politics and social structure, these states’ business-friendly policies now have something to teach the progressive Golden State.

The defense and aerospace industries are showcases for California’s problem and missed opportunities. The state still leads in numbers of aerospace engineers and creates cutting-edge technologies. But once companies develop products based on all that innovation, they've tended to move the manufacturing, with its high paying blue-collar jobs, elsewhere, chasing fewer regulations, cheaper energy and a less expensive cost of living.

Take Jet Zero, which makes fuel-efficient planes. The company, based in Long Beach, is ready for prime time, with large orders for its new planes. But those jets will be built in Greensboro, N.C., in a $4.7-billion plant employing more than 14,000 people over the next decade. The company also plans to move its headquarters to Greensboro when the plant is finished.