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Nine Out of Every 10 Silicon Valley Jobs Pays Less Than In 1997, Report Finds (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Mercury News: Nine out of every 10 Silicon Valley jobs pays less now than when Netflix first launched in 1997, despite one of the nation's strongest economic booms and a historically low unemployment rate that outpaces the national average. While tech workers have thrived, employees in the middle of Silicon Valley's income ladder have been hit hardest as their inflation-adjusted wages declined between 12 and 14 percent over the past 20 years, according to a study from UC Santa Cruz's Everett Program for Technology and Social Change and the labor think tank Working Partnership USA, which examined the economic impact of technology companies.
Technology workers saw a median wage increase of 32 percent over the past 20 years, the study found. But Silicon Valley workers in virtually all other areas lost ground during that time. Across all jobs, wages for even the highest-paid 10 percent increased just under 1 percent, the study found. Meanwhile, the region's economy has been booming. Since 2001, the amount of money generated per Silicon Valley resident -- the area's per person GDP -- has grown 74 percent, the study found. That's more than five times faster than the equivalent national growth. Also, a smaller percentage of wealth is going to workers. "In 2001, about 64 percent of the money generated in Silicon Valley went to workers," reports Mercury News. "By 2016, that was down to 60 percent. The drop translated to $9.6 billion -- about $8,480 in potential pay and benefits per worker -- that instead went to investors and owners, according to the study."
Technology workers saw a median wage increase of 32 percent over the past 20 years, the study found. But Silicon Valley workers in virtually all other areas lost ground during that time. Across all jobs, wages for even the highest-paid 10 percent increased just under 1 percent, the study found. Meanwhile, the region's economy has been booming. Since 2001, the amount of money generated per Silicon Valley resident -- the area's per person GDP -- has grown 74 percent, the study found. That's more than five times faster than the equivalent national growth. Also, a smaller percentage of wealth is going to workers. "In 2001, about 64 percent of the money generated in Silicon Valley went to workers," reports Mercury News. "By 2016, that was down to 60 percent. The drop translated to $9.6 billion -- about $8,480 in potential pay and benefits per worker -- that instead went to investors and owners, according to the study."
I can't tell if you're joking, but Netflix started as DVD rental by mail service. It was several years before they added a streaming component.
Hardcore conservatives didn't want a bank bailout. The banks had made bad some decisions, which came back to bite them. Irresponsible companies deserve to bankrupt. The House Republicans vetoed the first bailout. Then the media started its panic and W said, "It's gonna blow." Banks spread their money across DC, and the second time, the bailout passed with BIPARTISAN support.
Gentrification: Turning a slum into a desirable area one house at a time.
Interesting, because Amazon's numbers from 2014 suggest that 60% of their employees are "white". That of course includes people at all levels. Managers are 73% white.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/r...
So either it's a problem very specific to development, which isn't born out in more detailed numbers we have from other companies, or you were extremely unlucky.
Excuse me for being skeptical, but I hear these 90%+ claims and never see a shred of evidence of it being true anywhere. When I ask people get evasive or the available evidence doesn't back them up.
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the problem is rent seeking. Owning property is traditionally how working class Americans build wealth. You own your house and don't pay rent. Then you can take the money you save on rent and invest it in education, if not for yourself then your kids. This is how things worked for the boomers, but they seem to have broken that for Gen X.
.com boom and housing booms to store a little away. Those poor bastards walked out of college with $100k+ in debt into the worst economy since the 1930s. They tried to protest at that "Occupy Wall Street" thing and were shut down by the FBI & provisions in the patriot act. Man, what a world.
The boomers gave up their pensions for the promise of big cash payouts tax cuts and deregulation. The didn't get the tax cuts, and the deregulation tanked the economy and destroyed what little they had in their 401ks. They're taking their limited savings and buying houses to rent to Gen Xers and Millennials. Those Gen Xers & Millennials have even less money since they didn't have the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s to build wealth like the boomers did. We got wiped out by the 2000 crash and outsourcing bonanza that shifted trillions to the 1%.
The Millennials have it especially bad. Us GenXers at least had the tail end of the
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RTFA. This is not caused by H1-Bs. Salaries for tech workers have gone up, and according to TFA they are "thriving". Tech salaries are up 32% after adjusting for inflation.
What TFA is talking about is everyone else. People that work in Sunnyvale grocery stores, or San Jose car dealerships, or Palo Alto restaurants. It is workers in the non-tech economy that are doing poorly, and those people aren't competing with H1-Bs.