San Francisco--Silicon Valley North; City and Surrounding Region Are Drawing Start-Ups and Gaining Jobs, Shrinking Gap With Traditional Tech Hub of San Jose
When it comes to high-tech jobs, San Jose is still the hub of Silicon Valley--but San Francisco is shrinking the gap.</br></br>While San Francisco's technology sector is much smaller, it is growing faster. Since the economic recovery began in the region in late 2009, data from California's Employment Development Department have showed tech employment in the San Francisco area rising more quickly than in San Jose's. In recent months, that trend has accelerated.</br></br>As of April, 94,100 people in the counties of Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo--which constitute the San Francisco metropolitan area--worked in the employment categories that typically include tech jobs, according to data from California's Employment Development Department. That was up 10% from 85,400 a year ago.</br></br>The same employment categories in the San Jose metropolitan area--covering the counties of Santa Clara and San Benito--consisted of 211,000 people, up 3% from 205,000 a year ago.</br></br>"San Francisco is catching up and may overtake San Jose," says Janice Shriver, a labor-market consultant at the Employment Development Department. "San Jose had been in the lead for information jobs and software publishing and all that kind of activity for so long."