Month: November 2003

While Clark County is booming, Silicon Valley is still sucking wind, according to the illustrious Mercury News:

The county’s unemployment rate remained unchanged from the revised September rate, 7.6 percent, according to the state Employment Development Department’s monthly report. This meant 69,300 county residents were unemployed in October.

So the nation is adding jobs, the state of California is adding jobs, but Silicon Valley is sitting still. I can see why, given some of the pitches I’ve heard from Valley startups recently. Buyers of hardware and network systems aren’t as gullible as they used to be, so Valley VCs and startups need to wise up just a tad and stop promising the moon when all they really have is a trip to Idaho.

Clark County, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland, City of Hippies, is one of the most economically depressed areas in the entire country. So why are local officials cheery about the jobs picture? Because there’s a local hiring boom:

Fifteen businesses either relocated or expanded in the county with the help of the development council since January. Of those, 13 shared details of their operations, and together they are generating about $21 million in annual payroll with average pay of $38,800 a year per job. The county’s average wage is $31,000.

“We declare the recession over in Clark County,” said Bart Phillips, development council president, at the group’s annual membership meeting in Vancouver. “It’s evident in our numbers. Clearly businesses are looking ahead to a growing economy.”

This is happening in a county with an unemployment rate of 8.9%. So Paul Krugman, Howard Dean, John Edwards and other Dem party hacks who ask where the jobs are should please look here. Many of Clark County’s new jobs are in the services sector, the kinds of jobs that are supposed to be moving offshore; this apparently means “off the shores of the Columbia River” from over-taxed Oregon and California.