When the recession ends (if it’s not over already) throngs of Generation Y-ers can be expected to flock to San Jose as one of the hippest places in the country. A team of experts from the Wall Street Journal used a variety of parameters to decide which cities will be the up-and-coming “youth magnets” over the next few years. All the biggies made the list, with Seattle and Washington DC tied for the top spot just ahead of San Jose, and so did some of the nation’s smaller cities, such as Portland and Raleigh.
It’s not just the job potential in Silicon Valley or the incredible weather that attracts them. For many young people it’s a chance to mix and mingle with others like them and build a strong social network, not just in cyberspace, but in real space too. So get ready to meet your new neighbors. If the experts are right, there should be quite a few of them, coming to a condo near you.
However, a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics does not bode well for all the Gen Y-ers that the WSJ expects to flock to San Jose. The city lost 45,700 jobs since August 2008, a decline of 5 percent. The loss was part of a much larger trend that encompassed all but one of the nation’s biggest labor markets. Only McAllen-Edinburg, Texas, a market town on the Mexican border, showed a job increase in that period.
The greatest number of job losses, 230,000, occurred in Los Angeles, but that constitutes just 4.2 percent of the labor force. Percentagewise, the greatest loss was in Detroit, where employment was down 8.5 percent (translated into 160,900 lost jobs).
Read More at CBS 5.
Read More at the Business Journal.
Have the Gen Yers come downtown at night to meet the “friendly” police. Won’t feel so hip then!
The Wall Street Journal identifying what is hip is like Pete Constant identifying what is healthy.
What is hip?
Tell me tell me if you think you know.
If you’re really hip,
the question, “Will it show?”
Hey it’s Barney Fife the candy@$$ overstating the police “issue” again. Yawn,…
The only ones you overstate issues in san jose are the police. They will bring a swat team out to get a cat out of a tree. They have a lot of nice toys though!
Thank you for proving my point. I rest my case.
No wonder your hero is barney fife…
Barney and the chief look and act so much alike they could be twins!
Perfect! According to most media images of us Gen Y-ers, we don’t have jobs anyway!
Match made in heaven!
Jesus, is all the above the best Gen Yers have to offer?
JMOC,
The gen yers don’t use email or the web. they only twiiter, tweet and text for info. so many just don’t see this web page.
tweet on!
Hip people seem to spend freely, even if it means using credit to live far beyond their means. Hip people don’t bat an eye about paying over half their paycheck for style (like the right car and apartment.)
Hip people get rich quick and broke faster. They drift in the wind from fad to fad just missing the latest one. Un-hip nerds work long hours without praise until the code works, or product proves out. Un-hip nerds build wealth by hard work. I’ll tolerate the hip people if they help support some of our businesses (used music and clothing stores, coffee shops, live music, etc.) But I really think that like the changing seasons, the hip people will move on the next time the leaves drop from the trees and the un-hip nerds will still be here enjoying both work and play on in a different way.
I’m glad the hip internet companies like Facebook and Google fenced off their own little compounds on the Peninsula. I’d rather have Cisco, Intel and the real workhorse companies of the new economy here than the flash and glamor of the paper wealth that does not relate to actual earnings.
Oh, I just had an idea, maybe the new Murdoch controlled WSJ is trading some shares in downtown condos for positive spin that will help speculators realize a better return on their investment? Do media types every personally profit from slanting news stories a certain way?
If hip is wannabee urbanites who prefer to abode in massive condo boxes with people all the same age, income, same surrogate children (Golden Retrievers), San Jose is the bomb. They do not have to mix with the elderly, the low income, or teenagers for that matter in their yuppie enclaves as you would say in The Mission or North Beach (Districts in unhip S.F.). I guess it is all of our Jazz, Blues, Folk, Country Clubs and vibrant classical music and stage companies that prove how hip we… ooops, got off on a tangent, that would be seedy Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Sorry about that. Remember, Walt Disney’s Frisco is right around the corner (across from Valley Fair).