>>>State squares job loss numbers with reality
>>>S.F. area miscounted by 150%, San Jose by 54%
>>>
>>>“Condensed version" taken from Sam Zuckerman, San Francisco Chronicle, March 1, 2003:
>>>
>>>
>>>In the two years ending in December 2002, the San Jose area lost 149,200 jobs, 54 percent more than previously thought. The San Francisco area shed 92, 900 jobs during that period, a stunning 150 percent more than previous estimates.
>>>
>>>Based on the revisions, Bazdarich calculates that Santa Clara County lost 18.4 percent of its jobs in the last two years. Or from another perspective, half of the state's total job losses occurred in the San Jose region.
>>>
>>>"Data for Santa Clara do look really horrible," he said. An area representing about 8 percent of the state's economy, it suffered 50 percent of the state's job losses in the last two years.
>>>
>>>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/03/01/MN14445.DTL
>>>
>>>
>>>***********************************************************************
>>>
>>>Employment in the San Francisco Bay Area is a serious issue. Ten years ago electronics manufacturing took a hit and we lost 60,000 electronics engineering jobs. Now it is the IT industry that is hurting, with 127,000 lost jobs from companies that no longer exist. The number of lost jobs is actually greater as many little companies were not included.
>>>
>>>Housing vacancies are at an all time high of over 8%. The good news is that people are still buying houses. The bad news is that foreclosures are at an all time high. It is hard to make those $4000 a month payments for a typical 1200 square foot house, if you or your spouse looses your job.
>>>
>>>Several of my frients who are IT professionals have not worked in two years or more.
>>
>>Hi Tom,
>>
>>Something I'm wondering about here. What is an IT professional?
>>
>>Does someone that just got an HTML book and defined himself/herself as one really is?
>>
>>What I mean is that I'ts been a popular thing for some folks doing some very basic things like summing some columns with Excel to say that there were working in IT world.
>>
>>Should we have to take it more or less seriously?
>>
>>I know that "The Silicone Valley" is the place but still what is the percentage of real IT workers that lost their jobs?
>>
>>At some point jobs were lost in other parts of the economy. Are we concentrating (IT folks) too much on a tree and not enough on the forest?
>
>Denis;
>
>The majority of jobs lost were for Java programmers, which by far was the most popular programming language for the .COM companies.
>
>If you were to come to my area you would find some things that have not existed before.
>
>1. Over eight percent housing vacancy. The normal has been at 1% for about 35 years.
>2. Over 16 million square feet of available office space. The last recession produced 1 million square feet of vacancy.
>3. Hundreds of hardware and software companies gone. Most are out of business rather than simply relocated.
>4. Over 90,000 people have left the area.
>5. Many of those that lost his/her jobs have degrees in Computer Science.
>6. Our last recession (1990-1995) hit the manufacturing industry in Silicon Valley. We were not so heavily into software programming at that time.
>
>We are too dependent upon one major economic force in my area. If something happens to that area of the economy we suffer. From 1970 – 1990 electronics manufacturing was the main area of interest of Silicon Valley. During the period of 1967 – 1970 Los Angeles had 85% of the electronics manufacturing in the State. From 1970 on Silicon Valley had 85%.
>
>It costs a lot to live here. That is a problem in itself. By the way my friends who are IT Professionals have at least an MS in Computer Science and a good deal of experience. The people in the State of California reports who are classified as IT Professionals are typically programmers and DBA's.

Well, it really looks bad. Are there any plans or business moves to help in the IT field in your area?

For us here it looks bad in some areas but apparently not as serious as it is in your region.

I just read some days ago that IT budget are beginning to go up again. Perhaps that will help a little. It should with all of the web services, .Net apps and all of those new cool things that will need to be done ;-)