Newsom in denial about business flight

The last time there was an exodus this big in California, it was directed by Cecil B. DeMille.

The state’s population declined in 2020 for the first time in its history, and it appears that California will lose a congressional seat in the reapportionment following the 2020 Census. Even more concerning for the future is the mass departure of job-creating businesses.

The Hoover Institution at Stanford University reported in September that 765 commercial facilities left California in 2018 and 2019. That doesn’t include an estimated 13,000 businesses that crossed the border into other states between 2009 and 2016.

In 2020, even more companies joined the exodus. Tech giants Oracle and HewlettPackard Enterprise packed up their headquarters and headed for Austin and Houston, respectively. Palantir announced that its headquarters would move from Palo Alto to Colorado.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is in denial. In his State of the State address, Newsom insisted that everything’s fine for businesses in California. “The special mix of audacity, human capital, and creativity found only in California means there’s literally no better place to do business,” he said.

That’s literally not true. The Center for Jobs & the Economy, a nonprofit project of the California Business Roundtable, notes that “California policies have created the highest in the nation cost-of-living and strictest in the nation regulatory costs.” As a result, a growing number of companies are “relocating, redistributing or centralizing” their operations — and their jobs — in other states.

California is also losing its advantage as a leader in venture capital funding. In January, PitchBook’s 2021 U.S. Venture Capital Outlook report said $156.2 billion of venture capital was raised in the U.S. in 2020, and 22.7% of that was derived from dealmaking in the Bay Area, with nearly 40% invested in Bay Area-headquartered companies. But now the Bay Area’s share of U.S. venture capital is projected to fall below 20% for the first time ever.

As telecommuting grows in the post-pandemic economy, it is even easier for companies to relocate to cities where the cost of living is lower, places that don’t win national competitions for Worst Business Climate or Number 1 Regulatory Hellhole.

Into this dire situation charges the California Legislature with even more bad ideas to discourage job creation.

The California Chamber of Commerce has just released its 2021 list of job killer bills. The list includes new additions to existing mandates, which already require employers to provide paid family leave, paid sick days, COVID-19 sick leave and emergency time off. Assembly Bill 995 would add more paid sick days. AB 1041 would allow employees to take paid family leave to care for non-family members. AB 1119 would require employers to grant time off for family responsibilities. AB 95 would require bereavement leave. AB 1179 would require employers to pay for up to 60 hours of employees’ child care costs every year. AB 1003 would impose criminal liability on employers who get it wrong, even if the mistakes were made in a good faith effort to comply with the state’s thick code of wage and hour laws.

It all sounds great until you add it up and try to pay for it. Maybe if Sacramento stopped treating businesses as if they were a biblical plague, the exodus would end and Californians would once again be able to find good jobs without having to leave the state.