Not sure where in California you are, but the SF Bay Area’s economy is heavily distorted by intentionally bad roads and artificial housing shortages.

Pretty much any blue collar or service worker is either living in a prop 13 house, has roommates, or is driving well over an hour to get to work.

That’s not true in many other places on earth. California could fix it, but the politicians keep actively making the problem worse.

For instance, there’s a statewide mandate to reduce commute miles (not carbon, and not time). If towns don’t comply, they get in trouble with the state government.

Similarly, construction permit departments are adversarial, and “affordable housing” initiatives routinely block market rate housing from being built.

On top of all that, the ‘08 housing crisis put a bunch of contractors out of business, and so did covid. Those people largely moved out of state. The result is that there’s no one to train new workers, and even if there were, there’s no reason for those new workers to locate here, since the pay scale doesn’t make up for housing costs. (This would be a huge opportunity if we fixed the roads so they could drive to work sites quickly, or allowed new housing construction, but we don’t.)