Silicon Valley Economy Shows Major Gains
SAN JOSE (KCBS) – A new report shows that Silicon Valley is making big economic strides by creating more jobs than the rest of the country.
The 2012 Silicon Valley Index was released on Tuesday and showed that the region added 42,000 jobs last year, a jump of nearly 4 percent.
"We're back to about 2006-2007 levels, 1.2 million," said Russell Hancock, President and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley. "Our unemployment rate came down and it now stands at 8.3 percent. That's a drop of about 1.5 percent over the previous year. California as a whole has a much higher unemployment rate, hovering around 11 percent."
KCBS' Mike Colgan Reports:
Joint Venture Silicon Valley authored the report with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Hancock said even though companies are thriving, the median income went down.
"If you take away tech, we would look like any other region," he said. "In fact, we would probably look more stressed and more depressed than any other region. But there were also a lot of firm closings this past year.
Hancock said that 46,000 companies closed in 2009 and 2010 versus 17,000 openings.
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