Unemployment rises in Silicon Valley
Down and out in Northern California
THE STEADILY-CLIMBING unemployment rate in Silicon Valley has reached a shocking four-year high of 6.6 per cent.
Recent statistics indicate that the percentage of unemployed workers in the sunny state of California has increased to 7.7 in August - up from 7.4 per cent in July.
Various South Bay counties also recorded month-over-month job losses in trade, transportation and utilities. In addition, the area lost approximately 1,200 jobs related to the faltering financial sector, including eliminated positions in mortgage companies and banks.
Jeffrey Lindsay of Bernstein Research explained that a number of Internet firms were chronically overstaffed. According to Bernstein, the industry is being forced to consider various methods of increasing economic efficiency during extended periods of slow growth. µ
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Slow growth
"According to Bernstein, the industry is being forced to consider various methods of increasing economic efficiency during extended periods of slow growth."lol, after a good many years of 50-100% growth, I guess the idea of nonexplosive Internet expansion comes as a bit of a shock.
A lot of these tech companies are beginning to realize that pretty, shiny, and other verbs just aren't cutting it anymore. You could say we've reached a tipping point in places like the US, and maybe parts of Europe. People no longer feel the need to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade.
As someone who doesn't have a lot of money to throw around, I'm looking forward to what I think is coming. Power saving features, maybe modular laptops, more penetration of the Linux OS(hopefully). You know, the type of stuff that consumers actually BENEFIT from, rather than pretty stuff that you never use.
Read it again
He said nothing about the tech industry going in a down turn, what he said was the internet industry was. The semiconductor industry is in a slight downturn, but that is typical and seldom results in loss of jobs.As you stated power consumption is a major drive these days and it will require new chips. People are not buying new PCs but they are buying cell phones and other technologies that are getting filled with more and more advanced ICs and microprocessors. Because of this the semiconductor industry is doing fine, apart from the cyclical lag.
Also note the Si Valley has lower unemployment than the rest of the state