San Jose tops ads for online job postings

Most companies looking for software developers, marketing managers

San Jose has more “help wanted” ads than anywhere else in Silicon Valley.

That’s one of the takeaways of a new quarterly economic report put out by California’s Employment Development Department.

According to the report, which looked at Santa Clara and San Benito counties, San Jose had a whopping 20,457 online job advertisements in June. Sunnyvale was a distant second, with 9,100, followed by Santa Clara with 8,245. Palo Alto and Mountain View rounded out the top five.

Apple had the most postings in June — 5,130 — followed by Cisco, Stanford University, Stanford Healthcare and Google. Most online postings were for software developers, marketing managers and computer systems engineers.

In June, Santa Clara County had a relatively low unemployment rate of 2.6%, up slightly from May’s 2.1% rate. Nearby San Mateo and San Francisco counties had similarly low unemployment rates during the same period, but San Benito County had a 4.9% unemployment rate in June, up from 4.5% the previous month

and higher than both the state and national unemployment rates.

Manufacturing ranked as the sector with the most employees — 180,000 — in June, followed by science and tech services and healthcare and social assistance. Lowest on the list? Mining and logging at just 200 and farming at 6,500.

The report also examined wages for the top 10 occupations in demand in the area. Marketing

managers earn the most, with a median hourly wage of more than $90. Retail salespeople earn the least, with a median hourly wage of slightly more than $14.

The other occupations named — software developers, computer systems engineers and industrial engineers among them — generally earn $50 to $70 an hour.

The two-page report also took a deeper look at nurse practitioners, whose earnings vary significantly. About 25 percent in the area make an estimated hourly wage of $54.97 or less, around half make about $60.70 or more, and the other quarter earn at least $76.36.

Overall, the San JoseSunnyvale-Santa Clara Metropolitan Statistical Area (San Benito and Santa Clara counties) has an overall population of around 1.9 million and a labor force of 1,085,200, with about 1,056,200 people employed and 29,000 unemployed. The median home value is about $815,000 and the median household income is around $105,000, according to the report.