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| 2024 Index center stage at State of the Valley Conference |
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Joint Venture’s research arm, the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies, released the 2024 Silicon Valley Index at the State of the Valley Conference March 1, reporting an unprecedented market cap of $14.3 trillion for the Valley’s publicly-traded companies. At the same time, the report showed the nation’s most pronounced income and wealth divides, and ongoing housing challenges.
The Conference, held at San Jose State University and livestreamed internationally, was kicked off by SJSU President Cynthia Teniente-Matson who stressed the crucial role that data plays in informing the public and providing a foundation for decision-making.
Joint Venture CEO Russell Hancock, who also serves as president of the Institute, provided two long-format briefings, one detailing the health of the Silicon Valley economy and the innovation ecosystem; the other reviewing the Valley’s community health, the pressures facing households, and the Valley’s progress against its sustainability goals.
Institute Research Director Rachel Massaro, who has overseen 11 of the Index’s 29 installments, opened the conference with a behind-the-scenes look at how the indicators are assembled and presented. “The real value of the Index comes from looking across the charts and indicators and putting the pieces together in a holistic way,” she concluded. |
| Watch Rachel Massaro's "Making of the Index" presentation |
| Index Briefing Part One: Economy, People |
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“We may not be booming right now, but we’re still growing,” Hancock explained, as he reviewed figures showing the Valley’s return to pre-pandemic levels of employment and workforce productivity. The sectors most hammered by the pandemic—retail, construction, accommodation, restaurants—posted significant job gains.
Hancock characterized a run of lay-offs in the tech sector as a case of “recalibrating,” pointing out that the layoffs constitute less than 8 percent of the tech workforce, and that unemployment rates (3.5 percent) remain at historic lows.
When discussing the health of Silicon Valley’s innovation engine, Hancock was joined on stage by Accenture Ventures’ managing director Tom Lounibos. Staring at charts showing the region generated $35 billion in venture capital in 2023 (down from $90 billion in 2022), Hancock asked “are we looking at a glass half full or half empty?”
“Half full, for certain,” came Lounibos’ reply. The three-time company founder characterized the previous spike as “exceptional” and “far from the norm,” and observed that Silicon Valley’s share of the nation’s venture capital remains at historic highs. “$35 billion is a staggering number, even compared to the dot-com boom.”
Regina Celestin Williams also joined Hancock on stage as he reviewed Silicon Valley’s housing trends and their effect on the people living here. Williams, who serves as CEO of SV@Home, observed that with a median home sale prices reaching $1.76 million, Silicon Valley has the highest housing costs in the nation. She also observed that the median home is out of reach for 74 percent of first-time homebuyers.
“We have to create an environment where development can happen,” opined Williams. “Silicon Valley has a bottleneck when it comes to funding.” She called for “more tools in the toolbox,” including inclusionary zoning. |
| Watch the Economy and People Briefing |
| Index Briefing Part Two: Community and Sustainability |
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State of the Valley continued with a long-format briefing examining health and wellness indicators, and Hancock led off with Silicon Valley’s income picture. “On the one hand, we have the nation’s highest average earnings,” he observed. “But averages are misleading,” he continued, “especially when your region has the nation’s highest earners.” He then reviewed charts showing the nation’s most pronounced income and wealth gaps, with 30 percent of Silicon Valley households living below the self-sufficiency standard. “Households in the top 10 percent hold 70 percent of Silicon Valley’s wealth,” he explained. “Households in the bottom half hold 1 percent of the wealth.”
Leslie Bacho, CEO of Second Harvest, joined Hancock on stage, reviewing charts showing 37 percent of the region’s children live in households at risk for food insecurity. “We doubled our services during the pandemic,“ she explained, “and Silicon Valley mobilized as a community to do that. But the crisis isn’t over. The need is still there.” She went on to explain that hunger in Silicon Valley will never be solved by providing more food. “If we’re serious about this we have to address all of the underlying causes.”
The briefing continued with a round-up of how the region is faring against its sustainability challenges. Hancock had numbers showing Silicon Valley residents are conserving more water, using less gasoline, reducing their waste streams, and diverting more edible surplus food. But he concluded his briefing with a chart showing the number 52. “That how many billion tons of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere annually, across all the nations of the world. If climate change is to be reversed, that number needs to be zero within ten years.”
Against that backdrop, Santa Clara County’s Jasneet Sharma joined Hancock on stage. As the director of the county’s Office of Sustainability, she was asked by the audience—using live polling—what measures will make the most difference. Bold cross-jurisdictional initiatives? More market incentives for technology fixes? “If we want the public to bike more, to take the train, to recycle and buy local, we need to make those things compelling through policies at the systemic level,” she stressed, to applause. “We also need to create the infrastructure to support these actions.” |
| Watch the Community and Sustainability Briefing |
| Erica Orange: Templosion |
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| The conference concluded with futurist Erica Orange who argued we live in a time where traditional notions of time, space, and thinking have become “boundaryless” – a coming together of the real and the virtual. “Time is now currency,” she said. She closed by asking how we create a future where progress prevails over pessimism, creation over crisis, action over apathy, and imagination over inertia. |
| Watch Erica's keynote |
| Thank You to Our Sponsors! |
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| The 2024 State of the Valley conference is made possible by generous support from Meta as the lead sponsor and El Camino Health as principal sponsor, with additional support from Accenture, Amazon, Bank of America, Stanford Children’s Health and PG&E, and these other sponsors. |
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