Tech is both Silicon Valley’s defining industry and its primary economic engine.
In the wake of the Great Recession, that engine has come roaring back at full speed. In 2013, Silicon Valley’s top 150 tech companies pulled in a record $103.7 billion in profits,1 an enormous generation of wealth: by comparison, the entire California state budget for both K-12 and higher education totaled only half that amount.
How is this wealth benefitting – or failing to reach – the Silicon Valley communities and workers who support these businesses’ success? New data reveal tech’s direct impact not only on its engineering workforce, but on the broader problems of inequality and working poverty in the region that so many tech superpowers call home.
