The Bay Area jobless rate hit 2.7% in April. That’s pretty good, considering the record is 2.6%. Job growth is diverse with strong gains in technology (no surprise there) as well as health care, construction, restaurants, entertainment and hospitality. A recent headline from The Mercury News even read “Bay Area, California running out of people to hire.” That is indeed suggestive! However, not having enough people to hire may well hamper our economy. Will we become victims of our own success?

There is hiring pressure occurring across all industries in the Bay Area. Execuforce, being focused on hiring for accounting and finance positions, has definitely seen increased pressure and need to hire both staff level accounting and senior finance leaders. In past posts, we have mentioned that the Bay Area has been fortunate enough to be the recipient of the lion’s share of VC funding in the U.S. This insulated us from the downturn in the past and is a main accelerant for our continued growth. However, VC firms are looking for a way to cash out, and most often this comes in the form of an IPO.  As highlighted in a recent article in the WSJ and what Execuforce has seen firsthand, there are very few CFOs that have the experience to both build an organization and successfully bring a company public. During their search, many companies go without a finance head for a long period of time, which can slow their momentum and stunt their growth. Also, having a good CFO in place gives a company credibility, which is attractive to investors. As Ash Ashutosh, CEO of Actifio Inc. put it, “You need a CFO ready to go learn new things when the market changes. That’s hard to find, because accounting and finance people by the very nature of the job are about predictability and removing uncertainty.” Read More >

Minus some/a lot of government dysfunction, 2018 has been a good year economically for the Bay Area. OK, most of 2018 has been a good year. Obviously, this last 2-3 months has been very turbulent. If you are a wealth management company, I am sure you have been fielding a lot of phone calls from worried clients. As mentioned in previous commentary, the Bay Area is often insulated from many of the national economic troubles because of our strong foundation in technology companies. The November numbers for hiring in the Bay Area are especially gladdening as hiring was not only strong in the tech sector, but across the board including: construction, warehousing, hotel, restaurant, arts and entertainment. This has been the best it’s been for a single month for the last two years. It’s so strong that many forecasters expect 2019 to be another strong year. Execuforce agrees, as we currently have a lot of momentum. However, with some of the biggest “unicorns” expected to go public next year, we have our concerns. Read More >