Interesting Silicon Valley News

Today's Mercury News has two interesting articles about the tech rebound that has been occurring in Silicon Valley. The headline, "The Tech Rebound," talks about the rebound of the economy in Silicon Valley after the painful dot-com bust. Some interesting stats for the % change from 2005 to 2006:

• Household income is up 6.2%, compared to a nationwide average of 4.9%.
• 50,000 new jobs were created in the past two years-- not quite the 200,000 jobs lost in the dot-com crash. Employment is still up 2.9% (1.8% nationwide).
• Home prices are up 4% (1.4% nationwide). The median home price in Santa Clara County rose to $749,000.
  
• Auto sales are up 2.6%, whereas they're down 2.6% nationwide.

We locals use the traffic on the major freeways as a gut-check for the economy. The good news is that traffic has increased, which means the economy has definitely picked up!

Another article talks about Google's impending brain-drain as their earliest employees approach the fourth year of vesting for their pre-IPO stock. Now that's a nice problem to have as an employee!

Check out both articles in the Merc for an interesting read!