Another Fortune 500 Company Leaves California

◼ Last week, the San Francisco Business Journal reported that Charles Schwab SCHW +1.72% is planning on moving “a significant number of San Francisco-based jobs” out of the state over the next three to five years. - Assemblyman Travis Allen/Forbes

Charles Schwab’s San Francisco roots date back to its founding four decades ago, with the firm ranking as the 47th-largest employer in the Bay Area. The company employs almost 2,700 people in the region, and has a company-wide workforce of 13,600. Observers close to the situation blame the city’s extreme payroll tax and high cost of doing business in California as the reasons for the company’s exodus.

This is not the first time that California has seen prominent companies moving jobs to other states. Chevron CVX +1.4%, founded in California more than 130 years ago, has recently announced that they will be moving up to 800 jobs from the Bay Area to Texas. The Campbell Soup CPB +0.25% Company announced that they would be closing their Sacramento plant and moving over 700 jobs out of California’s Capital. Boeing BA +0.61% announced last September their plans to shutter a massive Southern California jet assembly plant and lay off nearly 3,000 workers starting this year.

Last year, Chief Executive Magazine’s annual rankings, based on a survey of 650 chief executives on taxation, regulation, workforce quality and living environment, ranked California 50 out of 50 for the eighth year in a row. California also received an “F” grade in January from the Kauffman Foundation in a survey of 6,000 small businesses across the country. The Tax Foundation ranked California 48th worst on business taxes.

One would think the politicians and regulatory agencies in Sacramento would learn their lesson