TechPulse 360

Silicon Valley's unemployment rate is accelerating

The unemployment rate in Santa Clara, the hart of Silicon Valley, with cities like Palo Alto (H-P), Mountain View (Google), Sunnyvale (Yahoo), Cupertino (Apple) or San Jose (Cisco, eBay), was 10 percent last month, up from a revised 9.5 percent in January and well above the year-ago estimate of 5.1 percent.

This compares with an unadjusted unemployment rate of 10.9 percent for California and 8.9 percent for the nation during the same period.

1. Trade, transportation, and utilities led the month-over decreases, down 2,000 jobs. Post- holiday retail trade cut back 1,400 jobs seasonally, with clothing stores (down 400 job
2. Manufacturing posted a net loss of 1,900 jobs, with about three-fourths of the drop occurring in computer and electronic products.
3. Professional and business services saw a net contraction over the month, down by 1,000 jobs overall, largely in employment services, including temporary agencies.
4. On the upside, private educational and health services rose seasonally by 2,100 jobs. With school back in session, private colleges, universities, and professional schools accounted for more than two-thirds of the increase in this major industry.

Up north, in San Francisco, the numbers are a little better. The unemployment rate in the San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City area was 7.8 percent.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 10:52 am and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.