California’s Tech Boom and “Bifurcated Recovery”

1. “California’s Silicon Valley is Hiring Again” — “Silicon Valley is starting to pop again. Green tech is alive, as is anything in social networking. Venture capitalists are investing. Google is hiring 2,000 workers this year; Facebook is moving into new quarters with room for hundreds of additional employees.

“We’ve got a lot of recruiting to do,” said Dena Quinn, facilities manager at Skype’s Palo Alto office. The Internet phone company will hire 280 workers in Palo Alto this year, more than doubling its Silicon Valley employment.”

2. San Diego Tech Companies Can’t Fill Thousands of Jobs — “Even though the jobless rate continues to hover in the double digits, there are literally thousands of high-paid job openings in San Diego County just waiting for the applicants with the right skills, according to the leaders of the local high-tech community.

But they say that finding those applicants can be a challenge, partly because of the area’s high cost of living and the lingering perception that San Diego’s more of a beach town than a Silicon Valley South.”

3. While overall California home sales declined last year, the number that sold for $1 million or more in 2010 rose for the first time in five years as certain segments of the economy improved and high-end home shoppers went bargain hunting. Last year 22,529 Golden State homes sold for $1 million or more. That was up 21.0 percent from 18,621 in 2009 and the highest since 2008, when 24,436 homes sold for $1 million-plus, according to San Diego-based DataQuick Information Systems. Million-dollar sales peaked in 2005 at 54,773, after which they declined each year through 2009.

HT: Steve Bartin at NewsAlert for the first two stories.

About Mark J. Perry 262 Articles

Affiliation: University of Michigan

Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan.

He holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University in Washington, D.C. and an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.

Since 1997, Professor Perry has been a member of the Board of Scholars for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a nonpartisan research and public policy institute in Michigan.

Visit: Carpe Diem

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