Silicon Valley's Unemployment Rate on Par With Rate Before Pandemic

Silicon Valley's unemployment rate as of the middle of last month was on par with the rate just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Bay Area, according to Joint Venture Silicon Valley's Institute for Regional Studies. 

Last month's unemployment rate was 2.9%, down 2.8 percentage points from January 2021 and 9.2 percentage points from April 2020, just after the pandemic took hold in the region.

Since then and the associated job losses, Silicon Valley has added 184,000 jobs, while 42,600 were still unemployed as of mid-December.