Job losses may prove me right
Back in December, I published a column called, “Nine predictions for Silicon Valley in 2009.” Number four on the list was this:
“The South Bay will give up all the jobs we’ve regained since the dot-com bust. Employment peaked at 1.08 million in December 2000 and then fell to 849,500 in January 2004. Job numbers peaked again in June 2008 with 916,500, but fell to 911,100 in November.
With layoffs just kicking in, that number will fall sharply in the first three months of the new year. And with no recovery in site, expect the valley’s job count to get close to the January 2004 level.”
That prompted a lot of emails calling the prediction way to pessimistic. Well, the latest jobs numbers were released Thursday by the state (PDF). Unemployment in Silicon Valley jumped to 9.4 percent in January, up from 7.8 percent in December.
And unfortunately, the job losses are moving us in the direction of my prediction. The state reported we lost 14,900 jobs to fall to 897,000. Hopefully that pace will slow, because otherwise we’d be on track to lose more than 150,000 jobs this year.
And that, of course, would be catastrophic.
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Relates to Yelp,not old columns. Briefly, there is no way this one doesn’t reek on ice.
Supposing you had an opinion about Yelp. So you wrote to them, said, I’m doing a series on your site, but I’ll let you tone it down if you pay me $300 a month.
Basic entry-level conflict of interest. A company pays Yelp so they can manage the message on the site. Pure extortion. And no amount of “tranpserency” can change the basics.
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