Tech Sector Finally Hit With Job Losses

Bits:

In the fine print of a jobs report published today is some mixed news for Silicon Valley.

For the first time in this downturn, the region lost jobs; it has 4,000 fewer jobs than it did a year ago at this time, and its unemployment rate is 7 percent, according to the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, which analyzed the California Bureau of Labor jobs data.

That rate compares favorably to California over all, which has an 8.4 percent unemployment rate, the research firm reported.

Read the whole story: Bits

Comments

[dawoodchuck]

This might be a trend that spells doom for the rest of the economy. Stay tuned...

[satyriasis]

I wish the Sacramento region had the problems the bay area/Silicon Valley has. Here we have no industries whatsoever. Our regional economy was a house cards built upon the unsustainable real estate bubble. The unemployment here Is bad. I'd put it at 20 percent if not higher. I haven't been able to find a job for a few years now. If I could land a job at Best Buy it would be a God send but those jobs are all taken.

[KCFreedom]

It took awhile for the recession to catch up with the Tech sector. In my opinion, its because the sector layed off and off-shored so many employees over the last 8 years while they were PROFITABLE, so they already had skeleton crews working in most places. Not many people to lay off in a recession.

In fact, most employees I know that are currently employed in the tech sector have said there's not enough employees to do the job properly anymore, unless employees work massive free overtime. Everything is turning into schlock. The other side of that, is people I know that work in the defense industry often have periods of nothing to do, because the wars are costing the government so much, they keep post-poning and stretching out projects.

Oh well, we all should write off the technical industry in general in this country , because all the companies want to do is give away all our technology to other countries. There's not going to be any technical leadership in the US anymore in the near future.

Welcome to the services economy. Isn't it grand?

[sculptor]

Where has the NYT been hiding that they thought the valley was immune? Note, this is of course a lot different than the dot com bust which was a tech bubble bursting but the real estate bubble bursting (far from over with only about 30% of the foreclosures happen having occurred to date) certainly is effecting Northern California a lot more than most other regions in this country.

[KillTheMessenger]

4000? Half of that is Yahoo, isn't it? And the other half could be easily Google's contractors. Unless, of course, if this is real tech companies and does not include internet businesses. Anybody out there who knows?

[wadenelson1]

Except all the laid off contractors "don't count" when it comes to unemployment figures. @#$@#$

[marijam]

I haven't had a non-contractor job since 2003!