California has extensive laws that impose fixed costs on employers (paid family leave, for example). CA is also notorious for lawsuit risks. There are also federal laws - Obamacare for anyone working 31+ hours, and many more.
In economics, fixed costs and regulations like this are called "rigidities", and are well known to cause shortages/surpluses and misallocation of resources. (E.g., according to Keynesian economics, such things cause most/all recessions.)
Those laws are usually based on the size of the company. FMLA (not CA, but relevant) only applies to companies of over 50 employeees, and if you've been there for more than a year. You can get around a lot of those laws with using contractors.
Regarding Obamacare, one of the criticisms of the law was that companies promptly began offering employees one hour fewer a week than would meet the health care requirement.
California has extensive laws that impose fixed costs on employers (paid family leave, for example). CA is also notorious for lawsuit risks. There are also federal laws - Obamacare for anyone working 31+ hours, and many more.
In economics, fixed costs and regulations like this are called "rigidities", and are well known to cause shortages/surpluses and misallocation of resources. (E.g., according to Keynesian economics, such things cause most/all recessions.)