California Revenues Down in July

LOS ANGELES — The California Department of Finance announced that state revenues were $330 million off expectations in July.

The finance department's release confirms the trend in figures released several days earlier by the state controller's office.

The 2016-17 budget forecast projected cash receipts of $6.6 billion, according to the DOF report, released Tuesday.

Two out of three of the largest revenue sources were down, but the DOF finance bulletin said that July is not a significant month for estimated or final income tax payments.

Personal income tax revenues were $278 million below the month's $4.6 billion forecast and withholding receipts were $247 million below a $4.4 billion forecast. Sales and use tax receipts were $22 million above the month's forecast of $1.5 billion. Corporation tax revenues were $57 billion below the $277 million forecast.

The DOF report is an agency cash report, so the data may differ from the controller's report to the extent that cash received by agencies has not yet been reported to the controller.

Controller Betty Yee's Aug. 11 cash report showed that state revenue was 9.8% below budget projections in July, the first month of fiscal 2017.

The controller reported that July revenue was $591.3 million below projections in the 2016-17 Budget Act, the third month in a row that revenue collections missed the mark.

Yee said in her report the decline might be attributable to slower job growth.

California's unemployment rate increased by 0.2 percentage point to 5.4% in June, the first increase since September 2010, according to the DOF.

The nation's unemployment rate increased by the same amount growing to 4.9% in June and remained unchanged in July. The labor force for both continue to increase with young workers in particular joining the labor market, the DOF wrote.

California added 40,300 nonfarm jobs in June following an upwardly revised gain of 27,500 jobs in May. This brings the monthly average job gain for the first half of 2016 to 30,900 only slightly slower than the 34,600 monthly average in the first half of 2015.