Today is June 21, 2003, which is the date that Brain Halla and Dr. Amad Bahai predicted in February, 2003 would be the start of the tech recovery in Silicon Valley. (See Blog Entry on 2/25/03). Now that we've reached the date, let's see where we stand. The peak of the Nasdaq was ~5000 on February 2000. Nasdaq is now at ~1600, which is higher than the 1300 mark in February 2003, the time of their prediction. Let's see if the growth rate in the Nasdaq picks up over the next few weeks.

Regardless of where you stand on the date and rate of recovery, the general consensus seems to be that we've reached bottom in Silicon Valley. An article in the San Jose Mercury news has some pretty interesting statistics. Since the burst of the bubble, Santa Clara county has lost one out of six jobs. This is the worst job loss for a region the size of Santa Clara county in the last 40 years. Apparently, this is worse than the decline of jobs in places such as Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York city. The other thing that the article points out is that historically, it takes cities many years to recover from such job losses. In cases like Detroit and Los Angeles, you could argue that they certain sectors never recovered.

I personally don't think that we'll return to the bubble era type of growth for some time, if ever in our lifetimes. However, I am a believer in technology and innovation as the engine to drive growth in the economy. Also, given Silicon Valley's past record, I would make the case that there's still a couple of comebacks left for Silicon Valley.