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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."
Yeah, gentrification is a major boon for landlords, and since they tend to live far away from the property they own, the rent paid doesn't really cycle back into the local economy very well.
The rest of the world has done fantastically well since then. You have to get your head around the ideas that are in play here. American elites decided to ruin our middle and working classes for the benefit of hostile people in distant lands. NAFTA, the Iraq war, TPP, they are not running things for the benefit of their own people. Heck, they don't even consider that they have anything in common with us. They are "citizens of the world" and anyone who says Americans are getting screwed is immediately labeled a Nazi and ignored. When you look at the actual goals of our elites, they are accomplishing them. It's just that they decided that they were going to ruin us to achieve them. It's working well so far.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
In that time period, SV has also added half a million people (2.5M -> 3M). It could be that those new residents represent an influx of lower-paid workers (remember, the SF boom happened after 2000). So it would be useful to know how the makeup of jobs has changed. If tech jobs are a lower percentage of total employment now than in 1997 (an increase in lower-paid jobs "diluting" the tech salaries), then it would appear that wages are declining in real terms.
A better study would consider whether the pay of specific job types has changed since 1997.
Businesses were throwing wheel-barrels of money at Y2K conversions at that point.
Modern corporations continue to fester this flawed mentality that every employee is just a cog in the machine; if one breaks, replace it with another. But humans aren't machinery.
Not just modern companies. In a graduate software engineering class I took (mumble mumble) years ago we had a rather vigorous discussion about people versus process. That is, if you have a sufficiently sophisticated and well implemented process, do the people matter that much? And the reverse, if you have sufficiently excellent people, does the process matter that much?
Big companies seem to tilt heavily toward the process side, while small companies and especially start ups seem to tilt heavily toward the people side. Interestingly, start up that get big enough eventually succumb to the sirens of process over people.
Sadly, none of this is new, nor does it show any real signs of changing.
It's got very little to do with immigration, and everything to do with development work getting easier and more common as a profession. Back in 1997 it was much harder than it is today, with modern frameworks and sandboxes to play in like the browser. Back then web apps were CGI scripts written in C++, and Javascript was only two years old and far from widely supported or standardized.
It would be strange if modern JS developers were getting paid as much as C++ people in 1997. There are far more JS developers, it's a far easier job. This is what happens as industries mature and the barriers to entry are lowered, and the skills required become more mainstream.
Today if you want the big bucks you need rare skills, like embedded or AI research.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Employers are not there to coddle employees or provide mental health services to them. It is not a charity and it is most certainly not a hospital or some type of support system. Employers are there to earn a profit on someone's investment, and that is their sole and only function. If you need a support animal to function or constant ego stroking to feel important, consider that perhaps you belong in academia not the private sector.
Honestly, the idea that corporations exist solely to make a profit is part of what leads to this psychopathy. Corporations should exist to serve the public through the goods and services they can provide, making a profit in the process. If they exist solely to make a profit, or generate value for their shareholders, then they really serve no purpose.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Can you give some examples of companies that have 95% immigrant worker populations?
I've heard his claim made about companies like Google and Intel, but their own stats paint a very different picture.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This.
I now make about 2/3 of what I could earn in that Silly Valley. But I paid about 100k for my house and have living expenses of roughly 1000 bucks a month.
In other words, I have more money left at the end of the month. Despite our crazy high "socialist" taxes.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The big companies seem to be more like 80% (talking about developers, not employees). Not going to give my job history on slashdot, but one small company I worked at had, before I was hired, no native-born tech people of any kind, excepting the VP of development. At the time they got bought they had 30 US employees and about 100 in India (devs etc, not talking about support), and 2 of us were born in the US (plus one technical non-dev). The acquiring company forced out everyone senior who wasn't Indian in the most blatant racism I've yet seen. Even the Nepalese guy got pressured out.
In the large company I worked at before that the numebrs were about the same: 30/100 US/India split, with 2 US-born devs (plus 2 managers).
When I worked at Amazon (which was Seattle, not Silly Valley) our group of 50 or so needed 3 people who could get top secret clearance. Problem was, we only had 3 devs who were born in the US, and I wasn't interested. Amazingly, the "we're trying to recruit US citizens, we just can't find qualified people" hiring process suddenly found another 3 qualified US devs over the next 6 months. Amazing coincidence, really.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There's a reason for that. People are fundamentally fallible, processes are designed to overcome these problems.
Walk the Tenderloin and tell me what wealthier people want that was built there. Is it the tents and sleeping bags on the corners? Or perhaps the piles of feces in doorways? The scattered needles under the trees? Oh, I know, the stolen grocery carts piled by the parking meters!
The only good thing about the Tenderloin is that it is walking distance to a lot of the tech jobs in Civic Center and SOMA. Walk Nob Hill or Hayes Valley and compare...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That's the key flaw in blaming it on the wealthy people. The locals willingly sold the properties to the wealthy people. If you sell something, of course you don't get a say in what happens to it anymore (political machinations to pass zoning ordinances and rent controls aside). If you don't like what they're gonna do after they buy it, don't sell it to them in the first place.
"Gentrification" is just an attempt to create a pejorative that describes what society actually wants to happen; desirable areas have increasing value.
If you have no "gentrification" it means that everything is getting worse or staying the same, nothing is getting better. That isn't how progress works.
No, that's not all it is. Gentrification happens when house values increase at a (much) higher rate than inflation. Houses become less affordable, meaning another area is created where people with lower incomes can't live.
Gentrification has other drawbacks too, as seen in e.g. San Francisco. Rich people move in, and start using their financial and political clout to shape the neighborhood to their wishes at the expense of the pre-gentrification inhabitants. Sometimes at the expense of the city as a whole too (e.g. the impossibility of building higher-density housing in SF).