Silicon Valley Losing Middle-Wage Jobs

The article is trying to give the impression of a vanishing middle class, but the data really don't seem to back it up. It defines "middle-wage jobs" as people earning between $30K and $80K, and notes that the proportion of these has dropped from 52% to 46% in the last few years. But with the exception of students, there's virtually nobody in Silicon Valley earning less than $30K anyway, so I suspect what this really means is that more and more people are earning over $80K, while the number of full-time workers earning less than $30K has remained close to zero.<p>Good news spun as bad?

Because when real estate is in the millions, it's extremely unattractive to live there unless you qualify for government help or you're rich.

"Confucius says, 'Of course, you want to be rich and famous,'" Leonard said. "'It's natural. Wealth and fame are what every man desires.'" But Confucius understood there is a moral decision too, and sooner or later an accounting begins.<p>"'The question,' Confucius said, 'is what are you willing to trade for it?'"<p>(From a great NG article about Silicon Valley during the DotCom boom that captures the energy and excitement of SV - <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/12/01/html/fulltext3.html" rel="nofollow">http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/12/01/html/f...</a>)

Their data seem to support my vague impressions:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=116415" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=116415</a>

I think many of those mid-tier IT jobs are now outsourced to India and elsewhere. CSRs, some system administration, and a lot of workaday programming -- the attitude is, get Bangalore to do it, whenever possible.