March 30, 2023 - One glance at the CV of Robin Franz Martin inspires with a story of someone who has devoted her career to making the world a better place. And she is currently in the process of laying a foundation for seminal work that could have a favorable impact for generations. Robin, the Executive Director of the Food Recovery Initiative at Joint Venture, has launched several programs, from a summer camp in Vermont to a Medical Reserve Corps that is still succeeding. She likes working with food because “…it brings people together.” And now, with her current project, she has an opportunity to bring many people together around a solution that transforms lives by confronting hunger in one of the richest places on earth.
March 28, 2023 – The unemployment rate in Silicon Valley increased again in February to 3.0%, following a rise of 0.9 percentage points from mid-December 2022 to mid-January 2023, according to analysis by Joint Venture Silicon Valley’s Institute for Regional Studies. The unemployment rate in the region is the highest since January 2022 when it was 3.2%. Overall employment in the region increased by nearly 4,400 workers, while the number of unemployed persons increased by more than 3,000. “The unemployment rate in Silicon Valley has increased for the second straight month, and most notably has increased in the region between January and February for the first time since 2014,” said Ryan Young, Research Manager for BW Research, and an affiliated researcher at the Institute. 
March 17, 2023 - The Joint Venture board of directors elected five new members to their body at their quarterly meeting. Unanimously elected were Jon Cowan, Senior Director, Government Relations & Community Partnerships, El Camino Health; Matt Mahan, Mayor, City of San José; Cynthia Teniente-Matson, President, San José State University; DeLinda Mrowka, Chief Revenue Officer, KQED; and Corey Verwey, Executive Project Director, LendLease. “We are so pleased to welcome this panel of accomplished leaders to the Joint Venture board,” said Russell Hancock, CEO of Joint Venture.
March 27, 2023 - Joint Venture’s audiences celebrated the rich and diverse arts of Silicon Valley through performers who shared their considerable talents. MOSAIC America provided a spectrum of music and dance as a symbolic representation of the cultures who enrich our region. Francis Experience ignited the room with its hip hop and jazz ensemble, performing vignettes dramatizing the lived experience of local community members. Led by Jonathan Borca, the ensemble used music and dance as a tool pointed social commentary.
March 27, 2023 - To highlight one living example of community building, Jessica Paz-Cedillos and Vanessa Shieh, Co-Executive Directors of the School of Arts and Culture at Mexican Heritage Plaza, shared details about a $20 million expansion plan. Known as “La Avenida,” The plan will transform a vacant, 30,000-square-foot retail space on Alum Rock Avenue into a 200-seat theater and a community-oriented cafe, along with a wellness center run by Gardner Health Services. It will also include a 6-story parking garage topped with a park, affordable housing for 100 families, and a multistory office and retail building, creating new neighborhoods and cultural hubs.
March 27, 2023 - A panel of leaders considered the data contained in the 2023 Silicon Valley Index. Moderated by Supervisor Susan Ellenberg, the panel included City Councilmember Alicia Aguirre (Redwood City); Veronica Goei, Executive Director of Grail Family Services; Camille Llanes-Fontanilla, Vice President at Sobrato Philanthropies; Raúl Rodríguez, Interim Chancellor of San Jose – Evergreen Community College District; and Juan M. Salazar, Director of State and Local Policy at Meta. The group agreed that affordable housing and childcare were the chief barriers.
March 27, 2023 - The second half of the conference put Silicon Valley’s community issues center stage. Russell Hancock, CEO of Joint Venture, began by showing the region’s jaw-dropping average annual earnings and the stunning value-added and productivity figures. He then showed how median household income hasn’t kept pace with inflation and how Silicon Valley exhibited the nation’s most highly pronounced wealth disparities.
March 27, 2023 - John Markoff, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote for The New York Times’ science and technology beat for 28 years, moderated a bracing conversation with Silicon Valley’s foremost academic interpreter, and one of the Valley’s most active and successful venture capitalists. AnnaLee Saxenian, whose early work explaining the Valley’s dynamism launched waves of Valley scholarship, argued that the tech sector was in the throes of a “correction.” Somesh Dash, a partner at one of the Valley’s first venture capital firms, spoke of the dynamism he observes in the start-up scene. “I have never seen a cohort of more battle-tested entrepreneurs,” he enthused. 
March 27, 2023 - “A cloak of uncertainty has descended on the region,” began Joint Venture CEO Russell Hancock as he referenced a spate of layoffs in the tech sector, a slow recovery for jobs in community infrastructure, empty downtowns, and a substantial exodus out of the region. “But how should we contextualize these trends?” he asked, pointing out that the region is at full employment, that the layoffs represent a recalibration rather than a collapse as the tech sector adjusts to new demand curves, that most of the departing workers were still in Northern California and the Greater Bay Area and still filling Silicon Valley jobs. 
February 15, 2023 - Silicon Valley is perched on solid ground despite growing income and wealth divides, persistent racial inequities, and a dwindling population, according to the 2023 Silicon Valley Index, just released by Joint Venture’s Institute for Regional Studies. The Index shows that population declined by tens of thousands, home prices rose by 7%, childcare costs rose twice as quickly as inflation, and wages were inadequate for the rising cost of living. "We see hundreds of thousands of meals required of our region’s food bank, and childcare cost rising twice as quickly as everything else," said Rachel Massaro, Director of Research for the Institute. 
New data from Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies
July 28, 2015 – The latest tech boom has stretched the Bay Area’s income inequality gap to its widest level in decades, according to a new study from Joint Venture Silicon Valley’s Institute for Regional Studies.
The Institute’s research brief, “Income Inequality in the San Francisco Bay Area,” found that average incomes among the highest-earning Bay Area households are $149,000 higher than they are nationwide ($489,000 here compared to $340,000 in the U.S.).
The gap between high-income and low-income households is much wider ($263,000 compared to the $178,000 in the U.S.), the study reported.
Average incomes among the top five percent of Bay Area households are $473,000, 31.5 times higher than the average incomes in the bottom 20 percent, compared to a difference of just $328,000 in the U.S. overall.
"Both this brief and our recently released report on poverty in the Bay Area provide a comprehensive look at the low degree to which our region's prosperity is shared,” said Rachel Massaro, Joint Venture vice president and senior research associate for the Institute.a
“Although income inequality in the Bay Area is comparable to measured inequality in the rest of the state and nation, it has been increasing much faster in the Bay Area over the last 20 years,” said Jon Haveman, a principal at Marin Economic Consulting, who authored the study.
About the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies
The Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies provides research and analysis on a host of issues facing Silicon Valley’s economy and society. The Institute is housed within Joint Venture Silicon Valley. For more information, visit www.siliconvalleyindicators.org.
