South Bay leads rising Bay Area job market

Unemployment? What unemployment?

At least, that’s what South Bay is starting to say.

The Trib reports today via SiliconValley.com that Santa Clara County currently ranks as the nation’s strongest job market.

That’s right, the strongest.

Santa Clara County saw a 3.8 percent increase in jobs in the calendar year ending in June. And there’s more good news for the Bay Area: The the next-largest increase in jobs nationwide is the San-Francisco-San-Mateo-Marin area, with a 3.6 percent jump.

That’s a good chunk of new jobs in our beautiful Bay Area. Pretty sweet, huh?

Jordan Levine, director of economic research with Beacon Economics, told the Trib:

“Jobs related to high-tech, related to business investment, are in demand. … the San Francisco and San Mateo areas have the same sort of tech jobs that you see in the South Bay.”

Jon Haveman, chief economist with the Bay Area Council’s Economic Forum, said we can thank some of those newly-rich tech geeks for feeding the increase in the job market:

“You have a lot of newly minted millionaires and billionaires in the South Bay. They are spending money and that is helping the economy.”

Another reason the South Bay is enjoying such a jump is because that region wasn’t hit as hard by foreclosures and such as the rest of the Bay Area was.

And fear not, East Bay, you get a piece of the job-growth-pie as well, experiencing a 1.3 percent increase in payroll for the year ending in June.