Silicon blues: Jobless rate all time high

SAN FRANCISCO: The technology downturn continues to hammer California's Silicon Valley, where the unemployment rate in October was 7.9 percent, the highest level since 1983 and well above last month's statewide average of 6.4 percent.

State officials on Friday said unemployment in Santa Clara County, the heart of the Silicon Valley high-tech hub, was unchanged in October from September, but they revised the September rate up to 7.9 percent from an initial 7.7 percent.

The recent levels reflect the fallout from sharply reduced demand for technology goods and services over the past two years that has led to scores of layoffs in Silicon Valley, where the jobless rate had been as low as 1.3 percent in December 2000.

Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said it would take a charge of several hundred million dollars in the fourth quarter as it cuts jobs and costs in a bid to return to profitability. AMD, the chief rival to Intel Corp. in the market for microprocessors, did not detail the number of jobs it would cut, but its chief financial officer said the headcount reduction would be significant.

In contrast to Silicon Valley, other major California urban areas saw their local jobless rates improve last month, helping the state's overall 6.4 percent October unemployment rate hold steady from September. In San Francisco, which has seen its once red-hot dot-com industry evaporate and has suffered as financial services firms cut jobs, the October unemployment rate was 6.7 percent, compared with 6.9 percent in September.

The jobless rate in Los Angeles County fell in October to 6.1 percent from 6.5 percent the prior month, and in neighboring Orange County the October unemployment rate narrowed to 4 percent from 4.1 percent in September. San Diego County's 4.2 percent unemployment rate was unchanged from September.