The New York Times ran an article about Silicon Valley this weekend:Profits, Not Jobs, on the Rebound in Silicon Valley. Apparently we’re in the midst of “a high-productivity jobless recovery.”
In the last three years, profits at the seven largest companies in Silicon Valley by market value have increased by an average of more than 500 percent while Santa Clara County employment has declined to 767,600, from 787,200.
Experts seem to agree that the outsourcing trend is fundamentally changing the nature of work in Silicon Valley. They say that venture capitalists are pressuring start-ups to outsource software and engineering jobs.
Some economists are wondering if a larger transformation is at work – accelerating a trend in which the region’s big employers keep a brain trust of creative people and engineers here but hire workers for lower-level tasks elsewhere.