Twenty Chamber of Commerce members gathered together for
Friday
’s Big Business Lunch, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, to
hear the prospects for improvement in the area’s economy.
Twenty Chamber of Commerce members gathered together for Friday’s Big Business Lunch, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, to hear the prospects for improvement in the area’s economy.
Linda Holroyd, a director at Joint Venture Silicon Valley, profiled the valley, past, present and future using JVSV’s signature index that measures the ups and down of valley life and business.
“The JVSV economic indicators show Silicon Valley returning to 1998 – before the boom – levels,” Holroyd said.
“To see what is really going, somebody needs to stand back and measure things,” Holroyd said. “That is Joint Venture Silicon Valley.”
The group’s annual index has collected facts and figures about the area for eight or nine years, she said. “Through these indices we take the valley’s pulse and see how we are doing.”
Her theory was that the area has always been – and most likely always will be – in flux, and mostly driven by technology.
In the 1970s the area changed from defense to integrated circuits; to personal computers in the 1980s, from hardware to software in the 1990s, continued into the 2000s by the Internet explosion. The latest new things, Holroyd said are bio-, nano- and information technologies.
Some key economic indicators:
• Silicon Valley lost 127,000 jobs – about 9 percent of total employment – between the first quarter of 2001 and the second quarter of 2002.
• Average annual pay declined by 6 percent or $62,500, slightly above 1998 levels.
• Venture capital investment in valley companies decreased 42 percent to $4.8 billion, just above 1998.
• Average lease rates for office and R&D space fell to $1.55 per square-foot, just above the $1.50 of 1997.
• Number of public companies headquartered in the region was 393 in 2001, just above the 371 of 1998 level.
Some education indicators:
• Third-grade SAT 9 reading scores for English learners showed 30 percent scoring at or above the national level; in 2001 the number was 25 percent.
• High school graduation rate increased 1.8 percent to 72 percent, the first increase since 1998.
• The number of science, engineering, math and computer science degrees awarded rose 18 percent between 1990 and 2000.
Other indices measure social concerns, housing and population patterns, environmental challenges and statistics covering voting and charitable giving practices. Only 9 percent of property taxes raised locally go to fund city services.
Sunday Minnich touted the Chamber’s new office at 17450 Monterey Road, complete with a visitor center. She introduced the Chamber’s updated website, which now includes a property listing database for retail and commercial properties.
“We had 6,100 hits in two weeks,” Minnich said. A job listing database will be added soon, she said.
Also on the horizon,” Minnich said, is a “Morgan Hill Gift Certificate” which can be redeemed at any of 50 local businesses and service providers, including golf, restaurants and hotels.
Details: www.jointventure.org
