Thursday, July 29, 2004
Bangalore gaining on Silicon Valley
No, not in terms of actual innovation or world class tech companies, but according to ZD Net, Bangalore is on the verge of overtaking Santa Clara as the world's largest concentration of tech workers. Currently, Bangalore has about 160,000 tech workers compared to 175,000 workers in Santa Clara. In this case, technology is broadly defined as computer design and related services; telecommunications companies; Internet service providers and Web-search portals; data processing, hosting and related services; and computer and electronic product manufacturing.
MK Shankaralinge Gowda, secretary of IT and biotechnology for the state government of Karnataka, said that the number of tech workers in the region will exceed 200,000 between 2004 and 2005, as IT and business process outsourcing companies continue to rapidly hire workers.
The 175,100 figure may not capture all the tech-related jobs in Santa Clara County. Some technology positions may show up in other statistical categories, such as employment services. For example, employment services would include an employment agency that might send programmers to work on a temporary basis for other companies.
Is this bad news for Silicon Valley? Not really.
Ruth Kavanagh, peninsula labor market consultant for Santa Clara County at the EDD, said that despite the Bangalore claim, Silicon Valley is experiencing employment growth levels similar to those in boom years.
"In recent months, we have seen significant improvement in the jobs situation. Between May and June [including non-tech jobs], we had growth rates very similar to those in 1998 and 1999. The county is gradually gaining back some of the thousands of jobs lost in the last couple of years," she said. Kavanagh suggested the impact of offshoring may be overstated, referring to a separate report by the nonprofit Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network earlier this month.The shift of work to lower-wage countries is just one of a number of global forces affecting job creation and loss in the region, according to that organization's report.
In addition, Angry Bear has some data on starting salaries in tech-related industries. CS majors are up almost 5 per cent, while information sciences are up in excess of 8 per cent. Perhaps, the hoopla over outsourcing was a little overblown?
PS: As far as technology goes, I think this is a fairly narrow definition of technology thats being used. So, if one were to include technologies like bio-technology, nano-technology etc, I wonder what the employment numbers would look like. Is there as much bio-tech activity in Santa Clara as in Bangalore, for example?
MK Shankaralinge Gowda, secretary of IT and biotechnology for the state government of Karnataka, said that the number of tech workers in the region will exceed 200,000 between 2004 and 2005, as IT and business process outsourcing companies continue to rapidly hire workers.
The 175,100 figure may not capture all the tech-related jobs in Santa Clara County. Some technology positions may show up in other statistical categories, such as employment services. For example, employment services would include an employment agency that might send programmers to work on a temporary basis for other companies.
Is this bad news for Silicon Valley? Not really.
Ruth Kavanagh, peninsula labor market consultant for Santa Clara County at the EDD, said that despite the Bangalore claim, Silicon Valley is experiencing employment growth levels similar to those in boom years.
"In recent months, we have seen significant improvement in the jobs situation. Between May and June [including non-tech jobs], we had growth rates very similar to those in 1998 and 1999. The county is gradually gaining back some of the thousands of jobs lost in the last couple of years," she said. Kavanagh suggested the impact of offshoring may be overstated, referring to a separate report by the nonprofit Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network earlier this month.The shift of work to lower-wage countries is just one of a number of global forces affecting job creation and loss in the region, according to that organization's report.
In addition, Angry Bear has some data on starting salaries in tech-related industries. CS majors are up almost 5 per cent, while information sciences are up in excess of 8 per cent. Perhaps, the hoopla over outsourcing was a little overblown?
PS: As far as technology goes, I think this is a fairly narrow definition of technology thats being used. So, if one were to include technologies like bio-technology, nano-technology etc, I wonder what the employment numbers would look like. Is there as much bio-tech activity in Santa Clara as in Bangalore, for example?
