If Silicon Valley Were a State, It Would Be #1 in Job Growth

San Francisco Bay Area job growth is back to the salad days of the dot-com boom. August saw a surge of nearly 23,000 new jobs, the highest since at least early 2000. If Silicon Valley were a state, it would be number in job growth in the nation, led by tech hiring.

In the last month, nearly a third of all new jobs created nationally originated in the Golden State, as California generated 44,200 new positions. By comparison, Florida employment grew by 22,700 positions, and Texas boosted payrolls by just 20,100 jobs.

Furthermore, new data reveal that professional and business services industry growth of 93,000 additional professional and business services jobs is driving a new California construction boom. Just two years after bottoming, the residential and commercial construction sector added 35,600 jobs in August, a 5.6% gain over the prior year.

With manufacturing and financial services activities the only industries that lost jobs, only 411,000 Californians received unemployment insurance benefits in August–down by more than 15,000 from July.

Despite grumblings that the Silicon Valley boom might be fading after Santa Clara County suffered small job losses in the three months prior to August, hot new IPOs from GoPro Inc., iDreamSky Technology Ltd., and Alibaba are credited with stimulating August’s 22,700 job surge in the Bay Area. 

According to the California Employment Development Department, Santa Clara County added 13,600 jobs, the San Francisco-San Mateo-Marin region gained 5,500 jobs, and the East Bay added 2,200 (seasonally adjusted). The gains were the best according, to a Los Angeles Times analysis, since January 2000.

“This was a great month for the Bay Area,” said Jordan Levine, director of economic research with Beacon Economics, according to the San Jose Mercury News. “Santa Clara County is still one of the leaders in job growth in California, and California is a leader in job growth nationwide.”

Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, told the Mercury News that the boom in the Bay Area is broad-based: “You can see tech companies constructing buildings throughout Silicon Valley.”

A reminder that California’s unofficial state bird in the dot-com boom days was the construction crane.

Chriss Street suggests that if you are interested in California technology please click on “Silicon Valley May Be Liable for Huge Labor Claims”

Image: BlogMitch