| Yes, the costs are skyrocketing. Yes, the commute is really bad. Yes, there are problems with homelessness, wildfires, and a lot of other issues. Still, Silicon Valley continues to be number one for innovation, and a dream for millions of young talents around the world. There is a good reason for that. There are about a dozen industries at the frontier of innovation. They include software and pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and data processing. Companies in those sectors invest heavily in research and development, and they create exciting jobs. In the US, nine out of 10 of these jobs were created in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, and San Diego between 2005 and 2017, according to a new report (Brookings Institution analysis of Emsi data). The top city for new innovations jobs was San Francisco, and the top region was Silicon Valley, in the US and in the world. In SF, 77 000 news jobs were created during the mentioned period, Chicago lost 13 000 jobs. It is true that rising costs are making companies move out of Silicon Valley, but not their core teams, not the exiting jobs. Manufacturing and administration are fine to have somewhere else, but the price you might have to pay for moving the innovation team out of Silicon Valley is still considered too high. Margaretha Levander Co-Executive Director SACC-SF/SV |
