It isn’t any exaggeration to say that California's economic slowdown is due largely to the downturn within the technology sector.

Let my trusty table provide some context by the statistics on state-level gross domestic product, a broad measure of business performance. Consider probably the most recent reports – the slowdown of the primary quarter of 2024 and the last three months of 2023 – in comparison with the boom of the past five years.

Overall, California's GDP has grown by a median of two.2% recently, in comparison with 3.3% between 2019 and 2023. This is a much larger fluctuation than in the remaining of the country: US GDP grew by 2.4% within the last two quarters, barely slower than within the previous five years (2.6%).

Next, consider the changing list of things that determine California's business climate, specializing in how much key industries contribute to or detract from economic growth.

Let's take a have a look at what we call “information” – the creators of cutting-edge products and astronomical salaries. This industry is dominated by technology firms, but in addition includes groups just like the creative talents of Hollywood.

These firms grew by about $35 billion a 12 months during California's five-year economic boom that ended last September, nearly a 3rd of the national growth. Over the past six months, the data sector shrank by $3 billion a 12 months.

No surprise. We've seen headline-grabbing layoffs at California's tech giants. Hollywood production hasn't recovered from labor unrest either.

The dark side

In California's quirky and dynamic economy, ups and downs are nothing recent. Take a have a look at three other notable dips.

Production at California factories of “durable goods” — long-lasting products starting from aircraft parts to household appliances — grew by $11 billion annually through the five-year boom. This 12 months, it has fallen by $5 billion compared with the last two quarters.

The variety of “professional, scientific and technical” jobs – well-paid office jobs – grew by $21 billion a 12 months through the boom, a fifth of the full. But within the recent slowdown, growth slowed to $8 billion a 12 months.

And growth in the actual estate and rental and leasing segment – the individuals who broker real estate transactions – shrank by three-quarters to $3 billion through the slowdown. High mortgage rates, which the Federal Reserve is using to chill the country's overheated economy, were key to the slowdown.

Adding these numbers together, the full growth of this suddenly sluggish quartet of industries has risen to $2 billion a 12 months over the past two quarters, up from a rate of just $78 billion through the five-year boom.

This is sort of a setback, especially considering that salaries in these industries are lavish.

The downside

How has California grown recently?

Let's start with the federal government's contribution to economic growth. This spending has increased by $11 billion annually over the past two quarters, in comparison with just $3 billion through the five-year boom. However, the massive budget deficits of many California governments suggest that this spending surge is prone to slow.

Or take a have a look at three industries that will finally give you the chance to shake off their corona cobwebs.

Retail growth has been $16 billion a 12 months over the past two quarters — nearly a fifth of the national total and nearly thrice faster than through the five-year boom. Can aggressive consumer shopping proceed to spice up the economy — nationally or across the country?

Construction also rebounded, growing by $10 billion over the past two quarters. That's a remarkable rebound from the $2 billion annual decline because the pandemic limited production and expensive mortgages dampened output. Massive infrastructure projects – and the state's hunger for housing – should keep the development industry lucratively busy.

And then there's agriculture, which recently grew by $12 billion a 12 months after previously shrinking by $2 billion a 12 months. Higher food prices – have you ever been to the supermarket these days? – may be good for business.

This revitalized quartet grew by $49 billion annually during the last two quarters – almost ten times the expansion through the boom.

It must be noted that work in these 4 industries is less glamorous and lower paid than within the previously mentioned struggling industries.

Jonathan Lansner is a business columnist for the Southern California News Group. Reach him at jlansner@scng.com.

Originally published: July 22, 2024 at 7:24 am

Black holes are remarkable astronomical objects with gravity so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape them. The most gigantic, called “supermassive” black holes, can weigh hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of the Sun.

These giants often live within the centers of galaxies. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, accommodates a supermassive black hole also in his heart.

So how do these supermassive black holes develop into supermassive? To answer this query, our team by astrophysicists We looked back on the 13.8 billion yr history of the universe to trace how supermassive black holes have evolved from their beginnings to the current day.

We constructed a model of the Overall growth history of supermassive black holes over the past 12 billion years.

How do supermassive black holes grow?

Supermassive black holes grow in two principal ways. They can eat gas from their host galaxies in a process called accretionand so they may merge when two galaxies collide.

When supermassive black holes eat gas, they almost at all times emit powerful X-rays, a kind of high-energy light that’s invisible to the naked eye. You've probably heard of X-rays on the dentist, where they're sometimes used to look at your teeth. The X-rays utilized by astronomers generally have lower energies than medical X-rays.

So how can light, even invisible X-rays, escape from black holes? Strictly speaking, the sunshine comes not from the black holes themselves, but from the gas just outside them. When gas is pulled toward a black hole, it heats up and glows, producing light like X-rays. The more gas a supermassive black hole consumes, the more X-rays it is going to produce.

Thanks to data collected over greater than 20 years by three of essentially the most powerful X-ray systems ever sent into space – Chandra, XMM-Newton And ROSITE – Astronomers can capture X-rays from numerous accreting supermassive black holes within the universe.

These data allow our research team to estimate how briskly supermassive black holes grow by consuming gas. On average, a supermassive black hole can eat enough gas to grow about the mass of the sun yearly, although the precise value is dependent upon various aspects.

For example, The data shows that the expansion rate of a black hole, averaged over hundreds of thousands of years, is strongly related to the mass of all the celebrities in its host galaxy.

How often do supermassive black holes merge?

Supermassive black holes not only feed on gas, but may grow by merging as galaxies collide to form a single, more massive black hole.

Cosmological simulations on supercomputers can predict how often these events occur. These simulations aim to model how the universe grows and evolves over time. The countless galaxies flying through space are something just like the constructing blocks that make up the universe.

This Simulations show that Galaxies and the supermassive black holes they host can merge multiple times throughout cosmic history.

Our team tracked these two growth channels – gas consumption and mergers – using X-rays and supercomputer simulations, after which combined them to create this overall growth history that maps the expansion of black holes throughout the universe over billions of years.

Our growth story revealed that supermassive black holes grew much faster billions of years ago, when the universe was younger.

In the early days, the universe contained more gas that could possibly be consumed by supermassive black holes, and supermassive black holes continued to form. As the universe aged, the gas was steadily used up and the expansion of supermassive black holes slowed. About 8 billion years ago, the variety of supermassive black holes stabilized. Since then, it has not increased significantly.

If there isn’t enough gas for supermassive black holes to grow by accretion, they will only grow larger by merging. We haven’t seen very many cases of this in our growth history. On average, essentially the most massive black holes can accumulate mass through merging similar to the mass of the Sun every few a long time.

I'm looking forward to

This research has helped us understand how over 90% of the mass in black holes has gathered over the past 12 billion years.

However, we still need to review how they grew within the early Universe to clarify the remaining few percent of mass in black holes. The astronomical community is making progress in studying these early supermassive black holes and we hope to seek out more answers soon.