Santa Clara County has the hottest job market in the entire country — by far — according to a new set of government statistics that track the employment picture in the United States.
Over the 12 months that ended in April, the total number of payroll jobs — excluding farm jobs — in Santa Clara County was 6 percent higher than the same month the year before, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What s more, no other metro area in the nation with a large job base is even coming close to the boom in Santa Clara County.
Santa Clara County is the only region in the United States that s growing at 5 percent or better, a prime example of the huge gap between the South Bay and its counterparts around the country.
The San Francisco-San Mateo County region was No. 2 in the country, although a distant section. That region, which consists of San Francisco and the adjacent Peninsula, posted a 4.9 percent increase in annual job growth over the 12 months that ended in April.
The Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford region of Florida was No. 3, up 4.3 percent.
Rounding out the top five were Riverside-San Bernardino in Southern California, up 4.1 percent, and the Dallas-Irving-Plano region of Texas, also up 4.1 percent.
This is all being led by the technology boom in Silicon Valley, an expansion that shows zero signs of fading away at this point.
Job growth in Santa Clara County is so strong that it s closing on its its record high for total jobs. That s a milestone that goes all the way back to the dot-com era.
Among Bay Area metro centers, Santa Clara County was the hardest hit by the dot-com meltdown and suffered the steepest nose-dive after that calamity.
But now, Santa Clara County is within 21,500 jobs of the record it achieved in December 2000. Job totals in the region are within 2 percent of that all-time high.
Tech boom is driving employment higher at a rapid pace in Santa Clara County, which is now just 21,500 jobs away from its all time high level of total jobs
