no chance, because nothing is static, and fate cannot be circumvented by spin
arrived at beijing airport by taxi driven by laid off human resource director of 1,000+ staff consulting firm specializing in iso9000 inspection/certification, and, even in face of direness, he is bullish, soon to start own company
and yes, i did tip the obviously learned driver more than generously
the trading company owned by english jewish hakka chinese sibling is inundated with large prospect overseas queries from america and europe for all kinds of stuff (wire/cable wooden spools, energy efficient l.e.d. lighting in form of flourescent tube to go existing fixtures, etc)
and newly competitive chinese machinery sector is starting to take shares from the japanese and koreans. america is not even in the game.
the situation on the ground looks good, the minute one lands from 30k feet height.
in the mean time, headsup, that it becomes darkest immediately before all becomes pitch black, and then the luminescence from one's imagination takes over
and, warning, that fiat money printing in the absence of genuine savings and true investment, can only end in tears
and until the root cause of direness is recognized, with the spin stripped away, all remain a lost cause
telegraph.co.uk
Silicon Valley gets a taste of the grapes of wrath
In California's Santa Clara county, the local food bank served 17pc more people in the year to May than it did in the previous 12 months. That month (May) alone, Second Harvest Food Bank's food connection hotline experienced a 71pc surge in first-time callers.
By James Quinn
Published: 9:26PM BST 08 Aug 2009
Not surprising, perhaps, given the economic problems sweeping America, but all the more so when one realises that Santa Clara county is the heart of America's Silicon Valley.
The "Valley" – an area once synonymous with exuberant wealth for a small group of highly educated, youthful technology entrepreneurs and engineers – is experiencing one of the worst economic recessions in America, at times putting some of the problems seen in old industrial areas like Detroit and other parts of the Mid-West to shame.
With unemployment now at 11.8pc – higher than it was in the last recession, which ironically was in part fuelled by the collapse of the dotcom bubble – the Valley is no longer the economic boomtown that it once was.
As a result, Second Harvest is now serving food to more than 207,000 people a month in an area that is typically seen by outsiders as one of the US's – if not the world's – most prosperous economies.
Although Second Harvest, which also covers adjoining San Mateo county, does not take details of where people used to work, the hotline's manager said that many will tell his staff that they've been laid off, but they won't say from where.
One new recipient, however, admits that he used to work at IBM and has recently struggled even to find work at Wal-Mart, due to the sheer number of people applying for available jobs.
"The economy has had a devastating effect on the local population employed by the tech industry who may not be "techies" – but who re the people who keep the buildings running etc," explains Poppy Pembroke, the food bank's communications manager.
"With already low incomes in an area with one of the highest costs of living in the country, the loss of one job can bring a family to its knees very quickly."
Second Harvest's experience is not unusual. Statistics from Santa Clara county itself show that applications for food stamps are up 60pc, applications for general assistance are up 30pc, and bankruptcy's soared by 59pc in the last 12 months. Silicon Valley is struggling – be it the wealthy-on-paper techies who are not short of cash, or the average joe whose support job no longer exists.
Recent statistics put the unemployment rate at 11.8pc, above the national average of 9.4pc, and even worse than California's average of 11.6pc – which, as a state, has been in a recession since at least September last year. Worse still however, is the semi-conductor industry itself, where unemployment stands at 13pc, and rising.
While the wider American economy has slowed down over the course of the last 18 months, the Valley seems to have come to a grinding halt in the last six months.
"It was as if they couldn't see it. In September, they were planning on expanding, but by the end of October, they were making staff redundant and reigning in production," said one former supplier to a well-known technology firm located in the Valley, who asked not to be named. One of the problems he identifies is that just as some of the firms located in the region have almost shot up out of nowhere, so they are much more nimble when it comes to contracting.
In total, it is estimated that some 50,000 jobs have been lost to major employers in the Valley. Those big names to have reduced their workforce include Yahoo!, which announced it would axe more than 1,000 of its 14,300 global workforce last October, many of them at its Sunnyvale headquarters. Google, consistently seen as an employer of choice by many in the industry, sliced 200 jobs from its sales and marketing arm in March, while even technology wunderkind Apple laid off 50 staff in sales at the start of this year.
But it's not just the big names. Small start-ups to have fallen by the wayside due to a lack of further investment from nervous venture capitalists include video processing chip-maker Brightscale, which shut its doors in May, and web application company Coghead, which did likewise in February.
That's not to mention the jobs lost at suppliers to the major firms, or jobs lost in ancillary industries, such as retail and leisure, which in part relied on the local economy.
The extent of the area's problems are demonstrated acutely in the Valley's commercial property market, where the office vacancy rate is at 20pc, according to a report by commercial brokerage Studley.
In the second quarter of the year, leasing in the Valley fell by more than 64pc compared to the same period a year ago.
But it is not all doom and gloom. Bill Neufeld, who owns and runs recruitment specialists Express Employment Professionals in the Valley city of Campbell – about ten miles from San Jose – is however seeing a slight up-tick in the number of jobs becoming available.
Neufeld, himself a former engineer in the semi-conductor sector who sold his engineering business three years ago, says: "I think there are more opportunities now than there were a month ago. Things have definitely begun to look a little better."
Current positions vacant include a well-funded business-to-business software start-up looking for a configuration integration engineer, while another software company is looking for a solution architect.
Although he tends to deal with smaller and medium sized companies, he has been getting more requests from some of the larger companies in the area of late for help with recruitment, although admits it's difficult to know whether that's a growing trend or the result of increased sales activity.
He remains optimistic – he has to, he says – especially as recent data on company's inventory levels suggest the semi-conductor industry in particular are getting close to rock-bottom. "We're seeing a lot of companies having to ramp up production, if they're going to remain in business," he notes.
In spite of his optimism, the mood among those he meets looking for work, many of whom have been unemployed for months and months, remains dour. "It's very difficult for them to see that things might be improving, and it's noticeable that a majority of candidates tend to believe things are getting worse, not better."
For those who can't find work, one of the most enterprising – and fun – solutions to come out of the current downturn in the Valley is JobNob, a website designed to match up unemployed jobseekers with cash-strapped start-ups.
The premise is simple. JobNob arranges a "happy hour" which is funded by a number of start-ups, who buy drinks and are allowed to perform one-minute presentations in return for recruiting volunteers from those out of work. Volunteers must be willing to give at least five hours a week to their chosen start-up, with the theory being that their enthusiasm will only benefit them when the economy returns.
The last event in San Jose saw more than 300 would-be volunteers turn up, with the skills on offer ranging from a myriad of engineers and developers to salesmen, a patent attorney and some HR professionals.
At the next meet-up – which is for Harvard graduates only – to be held in San Francisco, at the northern end of the Valley, companies presenting and paying include an online art gallery and home art party start-up, and one boldly looking to change the online payments space.
Unemployed Jessica Aria has already started volunteering. Having seen her work as a financial consultant to technology firms including Hewlett-Packard and Juniper dry up last November, she began helping out one-day a week at Second Harvest's San Mateo office every Friday.
The rest of the week , she spends looking for work, and studying for a certified supply management course, as she attempts to re-engineer her own career prospects.
"I guess the recession gave me a chance to review my career," says Aria, who previously worked for United Airlines for more than a decade in inventory and financial management. "I realised that there's so many financial analysts out of work right now, so it's better to change direction a little."
"I've started getting calls from my former employer, about once every two weeks now, talking about the possibility of new projects," she admits, but seems hell bent on her career-shift.
"But when I see clients of the food bank, or work through their applications, I see a lot of middle-aged, qualified people, out of work for a long time, and they're really suffering."
Tellingly, across California as a whole, after the recession that followed the dotcom collapse, it took 21 months to recover the 372,300 jobs lost.
By the end of June, California had already lost 917,400 jobs, with little indication – in spite of the uptick in Friday's non-farm payroll numbers – as to when the downturn will abate. Aria may be one of the lucky ones.
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