San Jose is the #1 city for web developers

I'm sure this will surprise no one--San Jose is the top city in the US for web developers. A Zippia study looked at web developer salaries, available jobs, and cost of living to determine the best spot for a job. Despite our astronomical cost of living, San Jose still came in first with 2,930 available jobs, an average entry-level salary of $63,320 (#1), and an average salary of $107,500 (#1).

The runner up was Seattle followed by Framingham (?), Austin, and San Francisco.

Top 10 List
San Jose, CA
Seattle, WA
Framingham, MA
Austin, TX
San Francisco, CA
California, MD
Columbia, MO
Dallas, TX
Durham, NC
Atlanta, GA

Source: Zippia

San Jose is the Milken Institute's #1 pick for "Best-Performing Cities"

The San Jose metro has once again dominated a list of best-performing cities. The authors of the study mention that innovation and entrepreneurship are core to our success and that we were first in the nation when it comes to wage growth over the last five years. Note, that is wage growth. That means that in addition to having the highest wages in the US, they are also continuing to grow faster than other regions.

While it is not great to have all of our eggs in one techie basket, it is nice when that basket happens to be the hottest industry right now. San Jose accounted for 1 in 8 new tech jobs for the whole country during 2015. The average salary in the San Jose metro is $111,000. The average for the nation is $60,300.

Top 9 Cities in the Milken Study
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
Provo, UT, and Austin, TX (tie)
San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco, CA
Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX
Raleigh, NC
Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN
Fort Collins, CO
Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL
Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA

Source: SVBJ

Saturday Stats: "Wealthy" San Jose renters grew by 32% in 2015

We ranked 7th in the nation when it comes to highest growth rate for "wealthy" renters. I put wealthy in quotes because the study is using $150,000/year of household income as the definition of wealthy. If you have a family in San Jose and your income is at that level between two working adults, you probably don't consider yourself wealthy.

In any case, San Jose now has 21,000 high-income renters (15% of the total renter population in San Jose). This number is increasing much faster than high-income homeowners. I don't think that is a good thing since it likely means fewer people can afford to purchase a home in the area. To read the full report, check out the source link below.

Source: RentCafe Blog

Saturday Stats: Rents are higher near the Shark Tank

There is a sometimes controversial theory that sports venues increase property values around them. A recent RentCafe study adds some legs to the connection. Based on their analysis, rents are on average 27% higher within a 2-mile radius of NHL arenas. San Jose in particular has 18% higher rents within this radius than the rest of the city.

This is not always the case. For example, rents are a 31% less near the Oakland Coliseum based on a similar study for NFL teams (Levi's Stadium shows up as 9% higher rent). For more info, hit the source link.

Source: RentCafe

Saturday Stats: highest paying jobs in San Jose

If you though the highest salaries in San Jose were dominated by tech, the list below provided by Zippia says otherwise. Healthcare dominates the Top 10 with six of the ten highest paid jobs in San Jose. Local surgeons pull in an average of over a quarter-million dollars a year. C-level executives, internists, physicians, lawyers, and nursing instructors also break the $200k salary threshold.

One thing this list does not account for is stock options which can easily tilt the balance of total compensation towards tech. For the full "Top 100" list, head over to the source link below.

Source: Zippia

Best Cities to Trick-or-Treat 2016

As a huge fan of Halloween, I'm thrilled to see San Jose maintain its Zillow rank as the 2nd best city to Trick-or-Treat in. Each year, Zillow creates the list using population density, walk score, home values, local crime data, and age distributions. This should theoretically provide the cities where trick-or-treaters can get the most candy, in the least amount of time, with the fewest safety risks.

Philadelphia took the top spot away from San Francisco this year, which now ranks #3 right behind San Jose. This means we now have the highest ranking west of the Mississippi for the study.

Within San Jose, the top specific neighborhoods for trick-or-treating were West San Jose (new this year), Cambrian Park, Willow Glen, Almaden Valley, and the Rose Garden.

Source: Zillow

Saturday Stats: San Jose rents are stabilizing

This will be good news for a lot of folks. San Jose is one of the largest cities where rent growth has slowed down. The rate of increase has only been 0.6% in the last year (Sep 2015 - Sep 2016). Given that we have some of the highest rents in the US, hitting the brakes may not be a bad thing. The major downside is that this will likely delay some major development projects in San Jose.

Source: RENTCafe Blog

San Jose Metro led the nation in economic growth for 2015!

Out of the 382 metros tracked by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, only 292 saw their economies grow in 2015. Of the 20 largest metros, guess which had the most growth.

The San Jose Metro grew its economy by an incredible 8.9% last year. This is miles away from the next city which is Houston at 4.6%. For all the buzz San Francisco got, they grew their economy by 4.1% last year, less than half of San Jose and putting them fifth on the list. New York barely made a dent at 1.7%.

What is even more impressive is that if you look at ALL 382 metros, including the smaller ones where it is easier to have big economic swings, San Jose still had the 2nd fastest growing economy in the US. Only Midland, TX with a population of 140k had a faster rate of growth.

The bubble chart below the grid shows economic performance versus the size of the metro (larger bubble = more population). San Jose is still performing like a fast-growing startup (hot small city) despite the fact the metro has 2 million people.

To paraphrase a Twain quote: the reports of Silicon Valley's death are greatly exaggerated. Every economy in the US would love to be where San Jose is today.

Source: CNBC, Hillrise from the San Jose Development Forum

Saturday Stats: San Jose has the highest density of computer and math-related jobs

The fact that San Jose is #1 in this stat should not surprise anyone. However, the gap between San Jose and any other city in the US when it comes to computer and math occupations is quite amazing. For every 1,000 jobs in San Jose, 124.9 of them are related to computers or math. This compares to just 78.9 in San Francisco, 76.6 in Seattle, 32.8 in New York, and 64.5 in Austin.

The chart below compares each city to the national average. A rating of 4.3 means San Jose has 4.3 times the national average of computer and math jobs. For stats on other types of jobs, hit the source link below.

Source: Abodo, Hillrise from the San Jose Development Forum

Saturday Stats: Median size of San Jose homes increased 51% over the last 100 years

San Jose home prices have become some of the highest in the world so you would think that the median size of homes would shrink to balance things out. However, this is not the case at all. Over the last 100 years, the median SQFT for a new home in San Jose has gone from 1,232 SQFT to 1,862 SQFT. To see how this compares with other cities, check out the source line below.

Source: PropertyShark

Saturday Stats: San Jose is the first metro in the country to break the million dollar mark for single-family homes

Ouch, the San Jose metro is officially the first metro in the United States where the average cost of a detached home is seven figures. The average cost of a come in our area (which includes all of Santa Clara County) is $1,085,000. This compares to $885,600 in the San Francisco Metro, $742,200 in Anaheim, and $742,000 in Honolulu.

The average cost of housing in the San Jose metro rose a whopping 10.7% last year. The San Francisco metro rose by 9.5%. Despite signs the housing market and economy are slowing down, home values are continuing to go up.

Hopefully we learned our lessen in 2008 and this won't get too out of hand. For those that don't understand what happened eight years ago, I highly recommend watching The Big Short (now on Netflix). Spoiler alert: one of the first people to identify the corruption and scandals happening in the mortgage market is from San Jose.

Source: SocketSite

Saturday Stats: San Jose is the 3rd most educated city in the US

Given that the tech industry is fueled by some of the brightest minds in the world, it should come as no surprise that San Jose ranks as one of the best educated cities in the country. WalletHub looked at the 150 largest metros in the US and compared nine key metrics such as percentage of adults with bachelor's degrees, public school rankings, University rankings, racial gaps in educational attainment, and gender gaps in educational attainment.

After all the numbers were crunched the San Jose metro came in 3rd on the list, only bested by Ann Arbor and Washington DC. Boston came in 6th followed by the San Francisco metro at #7. The same study ranked San Jose as #7 in 2014, so there is a positive trend in our area. To see the full list as well as more stats check out the source link below.

Source: WalletHub, thanks to Barclay Livker for sending this in!

Saturday Stats: San Jose is the 2nd healthiest region in the US

Great news, we just ranked as the second most "healthy" metro in the country. The study looked at two dozen measures of health factors and health outcomes (such as average lifespan).

San Jose has a very low premature death rate at 0.2%, an adult obesity rate of only 19.6%, and only 7.1% adults do not have health insurance. Only 9.1% of San Joseans smoke, the fourth smallest share of any US city. The best part is we ranked highest on the metric that is most important, life expectancy. Our average lifespan is comes in at an impressive 82.7 years.

Source: 24/7 Wall St., Thanks to Barclay Livker for sending this in!

Saturday Stats: the San Jose Metro is worth $419 billion

Thanks to soaring property values and new flagship office developments, the value of all real estate in Santa Clara County has hit $419 billion. That is $30.9 billion more than 2015 (7.9% increase). The biggest increases in assessed property value came from Mountain View, Santa Clara, and Cupertino (due to Apple Campus II). San Jose proper appreciated at a respectable 7% which unincorporated parts of the county saw the least appreciation at 0.89%.

Source: SVBJ

Saturday Stats: San Jose has the 4th highest percentage of upper class residents in the US

The Pew Research center conducted a study to see how income classes have changed over time in 229 US metros. Part of the study was highlighting the 10 metros with the largest percentage of upper-income populations. "Upper income" was defined by being more than double the US median household income relative to the national average cost of living. That means that very expensive areas are adjusted downward. Despite this, the San Jose metro can in 4th on the list, with 31% of the population considered upper class and a median household income of $187,390. San Francisco was 9th on the list with 28% of residents considered upper class and a median income of $185,290.

However, I would argue that if you have a household income of $187,390 in Silicon Valley, you are not wealthy and most likely in the upper middle-class bracket based on purchasing power. Likely you are not living in an extravagant house or enjoying a lavish lifestyle. If you have kids and a mortgage, you might barely be getting by. Check out the source link below for the top 10 list and more details.

Source: Business Insider, hat tip to Barclay Livker for sending this in!

Saturday Stats: San Jose is the "weirdest" place in America

Weird can mean a lot of things, but in this case it is a good thing. An economist recently did a study based on 20 different variables to see which metro areas had the most deviations from being "normal." The metrics included the proportion of the population that is foreign born, married, working, in the military, that own a car, etc.

The San Jose metro came in as the most "weird" city in the US whereas Oklahoma was the most normal. San Jose ranked so highly due to our large percentage of immigrants, workers with high education, and high salaries. New York came in second on the "weirdness" list.

Source: Washington Post, hat tip to Fuss Lopez for sending this in!

Saturday Stats: San Jose is the #3 best metro for entrepreneurship growth

In the latest annual Kauffman study for startup funding growth, San Jose rose from fifth to third place on the list behind Washington D.C. and Austin. Note that this ranking is for growth and not total funding. In terms of total funding, the Bay Area nabbed $34 billion in investment during 2015, which is 27% of all the money invested in startups for the entire world. San Francisco dropped rank in the study from sixth place to eighth place.

The report also ranked the San Jose metro as being #1 for "emerging growth IPO density," whatever that means. San Francisco clocked in at #2 for that list.

Source: SVBJ

Saturday Stats: San Jose is the top place to start a business in America

San Jose has returned to the top spot as the best city in the country to start a business according to an annual ranking by Biz2Credit. Shockingly, we came in at 18th place last year due to high costs of doing business. However, this year the other criteria were more than able to make up for those costs. The study looked at the health of small businesses in each metro, the entrepreneurial ecosystem, taxes, and the local talent pool.

New York City took the second highest spot on the list followed by San Francisco in third. For more details, read the full article over here.

Source: CNBC

Saturday Stats: Silicon Valley unemployment drops even further

Despite signs that the economy might be slowing down, unemployment somehow is continuing to drop. The San Jose metro has reached a ridiculously low 3.7% unemployment rate this April. This is down from 3.9% in the previous month and 4.1% a year ago. It's starting to feel a lot like 1999.

Statewide, 1,800 IT jobs were lost in April. In the San Jose metro, 400 were added in April. Clearly we're still doing something right. Hopefully we can maintain these stats for a while longer.

Source: SVBJ

Saturday Status - San Jose is the #1 city for jobs

San Jose nailed the top spot on yet another study seeking the best cities for jobs. Glassdoor calculated a an overall job score by looking at hiring opportunities, cost of living, work-life balance, and job satisfaction (all equally weighted). San Jose was the clear winner and had the highest median base salary of any metro in the United States ($112,000/year). San Francisco came in second place.

Source: Glassdoor