Journal Article

The Bay Area economy: down but not out


Abstract: After being the quintessential darling of the nation's economy, the San Francisco Bay Area has been battered by the information technology (IT) downturn; nearly one in ten jobs in the Bay Area has disappeared since the peak of late 2000, and half of those were in the IT sector. This Economic Letter explores the sources of the boom and bust in the Bay Area and puts the region's recent contraction in the context of the U.S. and other regional IT centers. This Letter also compares the current episode of weakness in the Bay Area to the long and deep recession in the Los Angeles area in the early 1990s.

Keywords: Employment - San Francisco (Calif.); Economic conditions;

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Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Part of Series: FRBSF Economic Letter

Publication Date: 2003

Order Number: 33