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Hiring Is Up in Silicon Valley for High-Skill Jobs
Carl Bialik writes to tell us the Wall Street Journal is reporting that five years after the dot-com burst, job growth is finally returning to Silicon Valley. From the article: "Doug Henton, an economist and co-author of the report, says with the growth in these creative engineering jobs, a new face of Silicon Valley is emerging. 'Ten years ago, this was an engineering Valley that pumped out chips and computers,' he says. 'Now it's all about creative tech and staying on the cutting edge.'"
Maybe....Maybe Not
I'm in San Francisco right now, and can vouch for that. When was the last time you heard the word recesion? When was the last time you heard it mentioned in the same sentence as the U.S. economy? People are very positive, there are a lot of new ideas, new startups, and money to fund them. Sure, most of them will fail, but that is how it's meant to be.
Simpy
Yay, would this mean outsourcing is going down, or that the industry is growing? Also, does this mean that it's actually worth it for me to continue my education and get a degree in Computer Engineering?
If you think it's worth it, you've never tried CS1721. . . intro to commenting
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
People will never learn :) Everything goes in cycles, from real estate to employment to global warming.
"What Goes Around Comes Around", indeed.
"People will never learn :) Everything goes in cycles, from real estate to employment to global warming."
Unfortunately, death is a one way trip.
The market has never been that bad for people with plenty of experience. Our recovery isn't providing jobs for the entry-level people who have been having trouble getting in. Therefore, if you ask should I major in CS or whatever for good job opportunities, the answer is still no. When there are more experienced people in India, I suppose most of those jobs will go over, too.
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I moved from NYC to the Palo Alto area in May 2000. That's right, just one month after the start of the long stock-market collapse and two months after the NASDAQ's peak, although of course no one knew these things at the time. I thus got to experience both the highs (insane traffic on 101, Sand Hill Road absolutely packed for two hours each afternoon) and the lows (significantly-better traffic on 101--admittedly a good thing in and of itself--and hordes of people losing jobs and moving back home each month).
It's important to distinguish between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. The Valley has recovered--traffic on 101 has long since become awful again, as today reminded me--but San Francisco still hasn't regained the equivalent of all those bubble-related jobs that vanished into the wind in the 2001-2002 time period, and probably never will. (I've been living in San Francisco for going on two years now and have yet to meet anyone who is working in a "Web" or "e-commerce" job up here. It's like a neutron bomb; the people went away but the buildings stayed.) By contrast, yes, the Valley lost tons of jobs, too, but at least the Valley had, and has, a longtime core of companies that made real products that do real thing dating back to the Fairchild/HP/Intel days. And on the Web side, of course, Google and Yahoo! are leading the charge. They're down there, though, and not up here. Unless and until another bubble develops, I expect San Francisco will remain a remarkably tech jobs-free (but with plenty of finance, retail, and other non tech-related companies) city on the edge of the world's greatest concentration of tech jobs.
I've done a brief survey of the jobs on offer and for your convenience here is a summary of the main qualifications being looked for this time round:
and most importantly:
They're farming out the lower end jobs overseas.
It used to be that a single mom could hop on the IT train and start out as a call center rep, then get trained within as a black box software tester, then a glass box tester (where you get more familiar with code), and then a program (er, design and development) manager.
You can't do that any more.
The kind of jobs they're hiring for now requires the kind of skills only a handfull of the human population can get into.
Web engineering? Product development? Creative and innovation services? That's highly competitive stuff, if everyone takes that as a course in college they're still only going to hire one out of ten: the best of the best. Hire mister second place web engineer or innovator and you are doomed to make a product your competition will eat alive in the marketplace. By nature these jobs can only be done well by the winner in a long line of competitors. Think: ten people and one chair in a game of musical chairs.
There is a lot of talent out there that will no longer be tapped. There are a lot of good workers who will no longer contribute to the tech industry at all because they didn't win the cut throat competition for #1 product designer; people who would be quite good at software bug hunting and even customer support. Someone is still doing those jobs, they will never be obsolete - it's just not us Americans any more.
Steve Levy is right - a lack of diversity in the job force puts you at a far greater risk during a downturn. Oh but if he had any idea how truly right he is.
Here is a clue for everyone. There is not a single job mentioned in that article that cannot be done equally as well overseas for pennies on the US dollar. As time wears on, look to see all those engineering, web engineering, product development, and all creativity related jobs, can be done overseas.
The defenders of offshoring also lie a little bit in this story. They imply that offshoring caused a rise in the number of higher end jobs. That is untrue. Technology caused that. There's nothing here that actually shows that offshoring caused a rise in higher end jobs. Offshoring or not, that was going to happen anyway. Their numbers (the replacement figures) were off, too. NetFlix was said to have 100 customer service jobs in 2000. The implication in the article is that we'd only have 100 cust service jobs in 2005. Hardly. Netflix's customer base has grown dramatically. They would have seen dramatic growth in customer service work if they hadn't, undoubtedly, gone overseas. Well, ladies and gentlemen, all I have to say to that is good luck finding a customer service rep at Netflix who will understand your English. And keep an eye on your credit report too. Whatever country whose data center is now processing your information for Netflix is not within the FBI's jurisdiction. If some goon sells your information offshore, guess what? The FBI will never have any authority to bust that sucker. You have to beg that country to arrest them. Good luck. Hope you like your rental movie.
On the other hand, rumor has it (and I cannot really substantiate this) that companies like DVD Empire outsource their customer support in the US to cheaper areas to cut costs. Again, that is what I heard from a self described employee. I say this is highly ethical.
Another alarming note? The article noted another truth: employers are now looking for Master's and PhD's. Soon you will need a post graduate degree to get into the field. What will you do when the water line moves up to PhD's? What degree is higher than a PhD?
Oh, and I forgot. This article does not mention the not so trivial percentage of lower paid H1B workers hired into silicon valley's work force.
This "solid" article is little more than a cosmic sieve with holes big enough for small moons to sift through...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Programmers with 5 year experience in AJAX and .Net
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
"The market has never been that bad for people with plenty of experience."
For some loose definition of "that bad". After 9/11, even experienced people were losing their jobs. Coupled with the technical industries tendency to hire the young, and the age discrimmination present. Things could get rough. Now we have retirement plans disappearing, and rising health care costs, and 2006 on could be hard for those who aren't "experienced".
Come on out.. Then pick up that two bedroom "fixer upper" for $700K.
The WSJ article said "Average annual pay in Silicon Valley hit $69,455 in 2005, up 2.7% from 2004". That must be average across all types of jobs, because the jobs they are talking about are much higher paying than that. But, the salaries are nowhere near enough to offset the housing prices.
The article is true, there are a lot of job opportunities here. But, I'm in the opposite mode. I've been here 8 years, and I'm looking into options for another area with good tech jobs, and reasonable housing prices. I expect to take a pay cut, but I won't have the risk and cost associated with a $1M mortgage. (Portland? Ann Arbor? Austin? Indianapolis?)
Even though the house prices are (much) higher than they were in the Internet bubble days, the rental prices are quite a bit less since we're not at 100% occupancy these days. Apartments are still not cheap (1BR 700sf is ~ $1,300), but at the peak those were $2,000+.
We've had trouble finding qualified engineering candidates for about a year now. Believe it or not, we outsourced some development work to Pakistan not because it was cheap, but because we simply couldn't find enough qualified engineers locally in the valley (ok, and it was also quite economical). Sure, this amounts to only one data point, but I think the general concensus is that the market is good for job hunters at the moment.
"Here is a clue for everyone. There is not a single job mentioned in that article that cannot be done equally as well overseas for pennies on the US dollar. As time wears on, look to see all those engineering, web engineering, product development, and all creativity related jobs, can be done overseas."
Whew! Missed me by that much.
I programmed since I was 6. I'm 29 now with a Scientific Computing degree from CMU. I predicted ebay, instant messaging, personal sites, and MMORPGS as being big in 1994. Can't find a job though. Talent and market forsight just isn't enough to snag a job these days.
God spoke to me.
Who needs silicon valley? Can't a skilled worker in Saigon do just a good a job? And isn't it about work? OOAD is nothing less than a must for even the most minor tasks nowadays. Code generators and high profile IDEs come for free a dime a dozen - it only takes people who know how to use them. There isn't even a need for PhDs!
Computer stuff is more and more becoming a craftmanship rather than science. Most people aren't competeing on innovation anymore, they're competing on price, performance, speed, speciality, availability and quality of service.
The hype is over folks. We are slowly leaving the steam age of IT. Finally.
If you want to do something new and refreshing learn the fine arts - don't expect silicon valley to be a substitute for dolce vita anymore.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The city (San Francisco for the uninitiated) has a high concentration of industries that feed off the valley, such as graphics design, web design, marketing, tech journalism, conference-related, etc... When things pick up in the valley, it's only a matter of time before the city follows suit. The valley has been slowly recovering and various industries within the city will probably follow along in a matter of a year or two.
Just in time for the real estate market to collapse, taking most of the economy with it...
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Fine arts people, for the most part, don't make rent.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I once saw an ad for a job that required 10 years in Java software development! 10 years! Which is totally retarded since java had only been around for about five or six years.
Really? Do the jobs have:
1. Pension benefit
2. Paid vacation
3. Full insurance
Career job? Will it pay off a mortgage? Guaranteed contract?
If not, it's not a real job. Could be hired Monday and unemployed by Thursday. Meaningless.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
we can get those good jobs back that they sent overseas.
programmers are the only people who are programing their dismmis...
"Yay, would this mean outsourcing is going down, or that the industry is growing? Also, does this mean that it's actually worth it for me to continue my education and get a degree in Computer Engineering? "
The answer to the second question is no..... It's just the same pattern repeating itself. (1998, 1999, 2000, 2005...)
... Tech companies are now forced into the domestic JOB market as the H-1B quota is closed for the remainder of the federal fiscal year (til Oct 1).
Hence ALL the squealing by President Bush and the industry lobbyists.
Lobbyists perpetuate their scam by claiming every position staffed by a contractor/consultant as unfilled !!
... because there sure as heck aren't any tech jobs in Ohio. I've tried for too long already.
I've also programmed since I was 6, and I have a BS in ECE from CMU (class of 98)
Though I'm now making more than I've ever been; from what I can tell people with experience are doing quite well. Its the entry level people that have been screwed.
Quote from the Article:
> "Our new engineers have an average of seven to 15 years
> experience," says Patty McCord, Netflix's chief talent
> officer. "Five years ago, we hired people with three to
> five years of experience."
5 years ago: 3 to 5 years experience.
Now: 7 to 15 years experience.
The people who had 3 to 5 years experience 5 years ago have
now 8 to 10 years experience.
So, in essence they hire the same people they hired five
years ago. Only those people worked on in the meantime and
got more years of experience under their belts.
It is not clear from the article, but if the guys with the
15 years of experience do anything with web development,
their names better be "Tim Berners-Lee", cuz 2006 - 15 = 1991.
This has to be the single most retarted statement I have seen today. Do you honestly think that computing will look the same in 10 years as it does now? That there's nothing new to learn? That's it, we've developed it all? No need for people actively pushing the boundaries of what can be done? Get a clue. This field has barely begun.
I'm sorry but I disagree with you.
Programming is more of a discipline than a 'calling'.
Clarity of thought, logical reasoning and open-mindedness and communication skills are key to building skills that make a great programmer. These enable you to build up the skills and experience,
Ironically, these are exactly the types of things you will have to exhibit on a Philosophy degree, where as computer science will probably focus on building your knowledge, without stretching these key areas.
Programming languages come and go, platforms come and go, idioms change, protocols change, etc.
What doesn't change are the key requirements for a good programmer; clarity of thought, logical thinking, open-mindedness, and communication skills.
I hope this gives you some food for thought, as it's not intended as an insult.
... it doesn't look so good.A F855_VALLEY_20060227193322.gif
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/MK-
Okay, so most people don't read the articles, I know.
But the numbers don't match the story.
So I call "Bullshit!" on this one.
Maybe you should read up on some of the mathematics research done over the last century, and rethink that one...
Anyone? Buller?
Cubicledrone,
Can you give us an idea of how you would write a 'guaranteed contract'? I'm just curious as to the language you would use.
And, in case you wondered what I think, the guarantee you are looking for comes from within yourself. Your ability to make yourself valuable to a company, to contribute to the goals of the business, and to be a positive role model for others in the company will give you more opportunities than you can possibly handle in one lifetime. That's a lot more fun than trying to find the right company to be your surrogate parent.
That is why all of the Indian companies are CMM level 5 certified or better. They already understand their value proposition.
My big complaint with this supposed economic "turn-around" is that it's leaving a lot of folks behind. Yes, the people who managed to stay with a large company, working with cutting edge technologies this whole time are in good shape. So are recent college C.S. grads. and those entering the program today. But an awful lot of talented computer people fell through the cracks in the early 2000's, forced to take big pay cuts and work in positions well below their potential, just to make ends meet. Now, these folks are the ones who can only claim "4-5 years of experience in technology X" while their peers who were luckier can claim twice that, simply because they didn't get a pink slip in 2001 or 2002.
As technology marches on, the bar keeps rising on everything. Traditionally, the computer field has been great because there was so much potential to be self-taught. Just get your hands on a relatively cheap PC at home, spend a bunch of time with it, and that's pretty much all that's required to become "employable" someplace in the industry. I knew several long-haul truck drivers, for example, who decided to switch careers and became A+ Certified Computer Techs in their spare time. It wasn't going to make them rich or anything, but it used to be they'd get a comparable salary to the truck driving and it gave them a better lifestyle with more time at home.
Nowdays, unless you're independently wealthy, you simply can't afford to play with the technologies most companies expect new hires to be experienced with. (Are you going to set up a Citrix farm at home? How about some networked ERP or CRM software? Have experience with 2-way satellite networking or high-end Cisco switching equipment? Oracle Enterprise database, maybe?) Therefore, the recent college grads. and grads. to be get a shot at a job, because their school probably did invest the money to allow them to work with some of this "hands on". Those who held onto a good job with a biig company have it to. Everyone else is screwed.
to lazy to write a full comment
I had another sig before, but this one is better
Pure, utter, B.S.. It was ALL about economics; there are plenty of qualified engineers out there.
I can guarantee you that, for a $200K per year salary, I can find you ANY number of qualified engineers. I suspect that you'd agree.
Heck, if you're serious, offer the typical 20% fee you'd pay to a recruiting agency to anyone here on Slashdot who can find your ideal candidate, and you'll have a wealth of qualified candidates to choose from.
So, we can attribute your decision to pure economics, and not that you couldn't find qualified engineers. One can always find qualified engineers; it's only a matter of how much you're willing to pay.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Some of the big tech companies here in Silicon Valley are only hiring temps. Others are simply putting up job ads because they're required to, or they're for tax breaks -- if someone actually qualifies, that would just be a bonus.
I got my current job because I know someone. No way I would have gotten this job otherwise. I know this because I was told so by my manager who hired me. I have a lot of experience, but in other areas. Directly experienced candidates (before me and currently) for the same exact job are getting turned away in droves. As far as my job performance goes, I can honestly say that I'm doing about as well as the "experts" I work alongside with, and they're both temps (I am too). All of us are better at our jobs than a permanent employee we have to work with (who barely does anything unless yelled at by our manager).
It's who you know, not what you know. Before my current job, I believed that, at the very least, 'what you know' would count for something... Only if you're a PhD and willing to work for (relatively) peanuts.
I guess Oracle appears to know what you are talking about:
"Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) is an entry-level, small-footprint database based on the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 code base that's free to develop, deploy, and distribute; fast to download; and simple to administer."
And Microsoft too, kinda:
"We originally announced pricing of Visual Studio Express at US$49. We are now offering Visual Studio Express for free, as a limited-in-time promotional offer, until November 6, 2006. Note that we are also offering SQL Server 2005 Express Edition as a free download, and that this offer is not limited to the same promotional pricing period as Visual Studio Express."
I guess "Express" is some kind of magic phrase:
"With DB2 Express-C, faculty and students have direct access to an easy to learn and easy to use database for relational and XML data at no charge."
I don't think it's in these vendors' best interests to have such high bars to entry for the worker either.
Been living off of credit cards for the last 15 years now... there is no money in the computer business.
Computers are just digital crack. They don't make you productive, they don't accomplish anything. All you are ultimately doing is moving bits around on a screen or on a platter.
You give me a job that isn't obscenely ridiculous for qualifications and specifications and I'll do it. Any search on computerjobs.com comes up with requirements for skillsets that are just so out there and retardedly ridiculous you don't want to touch them with a ten foot pole. Like having to learn a whole slew of programming languages and libraries just for one job, that you know are dead obsolete already before you even crack the manuals.
The IT industry is whack.
This is a superb and succienct summary of the situation, even given some of the fine engineers that I've seen in India.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Who needs silicon valley?
Urban concentrations are still important because of the social networks they engender. In particular, Silicon Valley has a very strong network of investors, universities, and veteran entrepreneurs. Perhaps more importantly, the environment in Silicon Valley is one that embraces risk. In the Valley, having worked at a few startups that bombed is not a mark of failure. It's more like a badge of courage. It shows that you have some experience and that you've learned something. People here literally enjoy sharing tales about companies they started that flamed out.
That entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to take risks and try new things is what makes Silicon Valley necessary. When other regions start truly embracing this culture of risk-taking, Silicon Valley will no longer be the dominant tech innovator that it is today.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I read last week where they were raising the restrictions. Yeah, they may be hiring, but will they be hiring Americans, or guest workers?
photosMy Photostream
I say bring those kinds of jobs to Ohio, or any other part of the US that has a large number of qualified people, and a lowwer cost of living than California. Doesn't the internet make physical location less relevant? I don't get why companies want to locate in an area where they are going to have to pay people 50% more for doing the same job. Building out there not only forces higher payrolls, but makes the people move to the job, causing even more expenses. Put the jobs where the people are.
"22 astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?" Stephen Colbert
I love the job posts that require: - 400+ years of AJAX.NET - 628+ years of ASP, PHP, Perl, ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET, COBOL, Windows Calculator, ColdFusion, Flash, Photoshop, Google Mining, VB6, XML, RSS, Java, JavaScript, J#, C++, Commodore 64, SQL 2000, SQL 2005, Oracle, Python, BASH, Binary, Hexadecimal, XML, More SML, More AJAX, ASP.NET 2.0 - 106-229 years coffee-drinking Starbucks or other name-brand. McDonald's coffee drinkers need not apply. - 300+ years managing 400,000,000 users in a Windows NT / Windows XP / Windows 3.1 / Windows Vista / Windows Google / Unix / DOS / We dont even know what else environment. etc... etc...
Hiring might be up but that doesn't make it any cheaper to live there. Housing on average is nearly 5 times the cost of average US houses.
Check out this guy (Cameron Moll) -- he's a fantastic designer and passed up a job with Apple partially because of the cost of living (he's a family of 6). Even for a family of 2 or 4, it's hard to find an affordable place to live.
"This time, tech firms... have moved lower-skill jobs out of the Silicon Valley area to cheaper locations, or outsourced them to foreign countries. The new jobs they are creating locally often require specialized skills in engineering and design." If the majority of new jobs in Silicon Valley are all requiring 7-15 years experience, and the lower level jobs are moving overseas, then what is going to happen in 5 or 10 years, when there are no americans with 7-15 years experience, because everyone with 7-15 years experience are overseas?
Not all of us are cubical drones. I have been UNIX contracting for 10 years. I generally do project-based stuff -- I only work for companies for ~ 6-8 months, sometimes shorter. I think I prefer visiting all kinds of offices, and working on all kinds of equipment, to being shut-in to only one limited function. Like they say, though, to each his and/or her own.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
You ever read 'The World is Flat'?
Us lazy americanos are going to be working in chinese sweatshops by 2020, and We Deserve It.
DEAD CAT BOUNCE
.com bubble burst is now hurting their product pipelines.
After years of job/cost cutting and low-quality outsourcing, companies are finally starting to realize that the brain drain of the
-ted
From the TFA:
"SanDisk's fastest-growing job category has been product development and research, where the company is now hiring "at the master's level and Ph.D. level," says Judy Bruner, SanDisk's chief financial officer. "We can't take just a general engineer.""
Like I said in another thread - there are still jobs in IT. But gone are the days where you could be a dabbler in computers and have the world as your oyster. Today, the mundane and average jobs have been shipped overseas. If you want to work in IT in the United States, you had better be among the best of the best. The bar has been raised. And if your skills don't match where the bar is set, forget it - those jobs are gone.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Come on ... hiring ... get real. We're in year 6 of the George W. Bush administration. People aren't hiring, this is the worst economy since Hoover and everything is going to hell ... well it would seem that way anyway if you read the New York Times .... liberals crack me up. I wouldn't post as an AC but I'd get mod bombed by some college lib who lives off of mommy and daddies cash and then wants to lecture others about how the world "should" work. Get a job bum, they do exist, then after you compare your gross to your net and realize how much you're getting screwed and how little you actually get in return, then talk to me about things "should" work.
Rent is going up and people who said $1,000,000 was too much for a house are thinking differently. Silicon valley isn't like Detroit or Minnesota. When the wind changes from one industry to another, the population changes. The QA engineers and programmers have moved out. The managers and venture capitalists have moved in. In 2015 they're going to be saying $7,000,000 is cheap for a house.
There are a lot of people in this world who think the 10x housing to income multiple of Silicon Valley is cheap. By world standards, housing should be 40x your income. $1,000,000 housing is cheap.
Well, consider that they've only recently stopped raising (unneeded) taxes to remove people off their land - given how they've done it to some in that area, and that namesake was one of them(and not just the airport). They've done it to companies as well, and the result is the same.
/.)?
Combine that with Ohio being the 2nd capital of corruption, and you figure out fast that things are bound to always get killed here if you work private sector. If you have a clean record, see if you can get a clearance and then a job with a government contractor. These people will even cover your vacation expenses, even to far off places such as Italy.
The only other option would be to overhaul education to a point where you could walk into any university in Ohio, even Case Western, and get all years paid off - no exclusion policy like Ohio State wants to pull.
Even the spammers are having trouble, but who wants them prosperous (at least in
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Uhh..dude, there's over 35 million people in California. More than any other state. I think they do have the jobs where the people are.
And there's more to California than just jobs. It's getting away from your job that's the best in Califonia -- as in you can go to almost any type of environment you want to in a few hours (ocean, forests, deserts, mountains, lakes) any time of the year. Having lived in many other (...cold...) places in the US, it's easy to see California's attaction..
We were outsourcing to India. But it is obvious they do not want our business. Protests against the US are going on. Do you want your money over there? Or does anyone think China is a better place to send your money? I try to buy things build in the west not the far east.
This is a bad idea. Decentralization needs to occur here, to drive innovation in teleconferencing software and reduce software and hardware prices due to lower real estate costs.
Insurance is higher there, costs of doing business in general have been proven to be higher there, why, why, why are high-tech industries continuing to locate major operations in California? Highly educated workforce and weather only gets you so far in answering that question. Add in the presence of critical mass that already exists and the issue is less of an enigma, but still...
Someone had to do it.
We should have seen this coming. Two weeks ago the set-up was, "Doomsday scenarios and hysterical predictions about the bulk of electronics engineering jobs moving from the U.S. overseas may be overblown." No kidding? You mean McKinsey's claim of $1.14 gained for every $1.00 off-shored can't be extended to infinity? There are real-life trade-offs not captured by their simplistic and self-serving "research"? Thank goodness!
Last week the "clincher" arrived with the headline, "Valley CEOs 'bullish' on hiring for 2006." As usual, the headline was picked up and parroted, literally word-for-word, on seemingly all the local radio and television "news" programs. (Is it really "news" when you report somebody else's press release?) The sub-headline, "More jobs were added in 2005 than expected," caused me to laugh out loud.
Apparently we've been doing something the "professionals," or people paid to know what the heck they're talking about, do not do. We've been keeping track!
We reported last March in, "Playing with the jobs stats," the state of California and the BLS changed their benchmarks, setting the stage, in our opinion, to show statistical job growth by manipulating the basis for calculations.
Under this new regime, the net of 2005 "job growth" in Silicon Valley was 25,100 (+3.0%) accompanied by a decline of -500 (-1.3%) in the reported number of unemployed. How do you "gain" 25,000 jobs but only lose -500 unemployed?
Measuring Santa Clara County "residents employed," (which should be harder to fudge) the y-o-y number comes in at -1,100 (yes, it was negative!), which could begin to explain the -500 unemployed?
Of course, the media focused on the most positive number. (We don't blame them but do wish they would point out 2005 was the first year ANY net job gains were recorded since the boom.) Even with the lack of traction on unemployed, 2005's +3% gain in "total jobs" was clearly, "better than a sharp stick in the eye," as my grandmother used to say.
One more factoid, then we'll get back to the point: 2005's local employment of 791.4K compares to December 1997's 925.6K, a deficit of -134K jobs (-14.5%). (The highest December was 944.3K in 1999, which means we are still missing -153K jobs during today's "recovery.")
The point at hand was the "clincher" article, citing various percentages of un-named CEOs and their expectations for hiring in 2006. We were in the process of point-by-point pithy comments and snappy comebacks but instead decided to settle for the following:
Housing net# of
2005 Median$ new jobs
January $0K +8.6Ku
February +$22K +4.3
March +$33K +2.2
April +$17K +5.2
May +$8K +5.2
June +$15K +5.1
July -$5K -1.1
August +$14K -2.7
September -$9K +0.1
October +$9K +2.3
November +$1K +0.1
December -$15K -3.8
Yes, the valley added some new jobs in 2005. However, beware the touts telling us things will only get better in 2006. Company insiders are selling their stock at record rates(&). Executives whose business it is to "spin" news so that you will feel safe buying their shares, are missing the correlation with housing.
Conclusion:
During the months housing prices were running up (January through August), 30,600 "total jobs" were added. The real "clincher" is once we got the first downtick in housing prices in July, the county lost -5,500 jobs the rest of the year.
Customers will write their own software with other software.. Just connect the boxes..