Geodog

Hard numbers on the Silicon Valley bust

I'm not a doom and gloom type person, but I did find some numbers on the Silicon Valley bust quoted in a survey in today's NYT Job-Rich Silicon Valley Has Turned Fallow, Survey Finds sobering:

Silicon Valley lost 127,000 jobs, or about 9 percent of its employment, from the first quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2002.

Software, semiconductors and computer and communications hardware lost 22 percent of their jobs from the second quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2002.

These are the first hard numbers that I've seen in a while, and they make sense from what I know anecdotally. It's rough out there. Some people are hiring, but not in any great numbers, and a lot of people are still being laid off. The country as a whole may not be in a recession, but we are locally certainly in a depression.

Still, there is a lot of exiting new technology being developed, and unless the whole economy tanks in a big way, people will still be interested in (and perhaps even buy some of) the crazy new things that us Bay Areans think up.

The survey itself doesn't seem to be up on the net yet, but it should appear on Collaborative Economics site or Joint Venture Silicon Valley's site in a day or two.

Update: Of course, it is all reading tea leaves. The Chronicle had an article earlier this week saying "Analysts: Some see beginning of turnaround."

Thanks to Scott Loftesness for the link.