Enough About Silicon Alley, Already

On the heels of the New York Times story about how the tech boom is affecting downtown San Francisco real estate, the Wall Street Journal is out with a story about the city’s increasing competitiveness with the Valley.

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.

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.

“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.”

Nearly every recent trend piece on this matter invokes San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who’s background is in civil rights law, and is now seen by some SF-watchers as being tech-business friendly to a degree that could undermine his purported commitment to the city’s marginalized communities who’ve already suffered under the industry’s gentrification in the Mission District.