Silicon Valley: working there

Overview

REGION (Santa Clara + San Mateo + Fremont/Newark) Official statistics Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year (via Census Reporter) · BEA GDP by county 2024 · BLS QCEW 2024 · BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics · Data: ACS 2020–2024; BEA 2024; QCEW 2024; BLS 2026M09

What is Silicon Valley, exactly?

Silicon Valley has no legal border: it is the name for the technology cluster around the southern end of the San Francisco Bay. In this guide it means Santa Clara County and San Mateo County, plus the cities of Fremont and Newark in Alameda County. San Francisco and Oakland are next door and share the same labour market, so many people work in one and live in the other; they have their own guides.

The two core counties had 2,644,387 residents in 2020–2024 (ACS) and 1,533,003 jobs on average in 2024 (BLS QCEW), with an average annual pay of $196,879 per job. Their combined GDP was about $656 billion in 2024 (BEA, current dollars), which is $247,884 per resident. The unemployment rate was 4.1% in 2026M09 (BLS, not seasonally adjusted).

We list 156 companies headquartered in the Valley that report headcount or revenue on their Wikipedia infobox. The largest by global headcount are Alphabet Inc. (204,757), Apple Inc. (166,000), Cisco Systems, Inc. (86,200), Intel Corporation (85,100), Meta Platforms, Inc. (66,775). Headcount is worldwide, not the number of people working in the Valley.

How this page is organised

• Map and companies: where the headquarters are, sorted by employees and revenue.
• Jobs and pay: what the San Jose metro area pays by occupation and which professions are concentrated here.
• Living: rent, home prices, commute and climate city by city.
• Getting there: visas, airports and transit, with official links.
• Data centers: facilities mapped by volunteers, with the limits of that source.

Official links: Silicon Valley

• Santa Clara County: santaclaracounty.gov
• San Mateo County: smcgov.org
• Census Bureau data profile: Santa Clara County
• Census Bureau data profile: San Mateo County
• California Employment Development Department: labour market information

These links go to official sources and open in a new window. The first one is the government's or company's own site as listed in Wikidata (property "official website"); check it before relying on it.

Map

The counties of the Valley and the cities where the listed companies have their headquarters.

Companies

COMPANY Compiled company-reported figures Source: Wikipedia infoboxes (CC BY-SA) · Data: year shown per company

Companies whose headquarters Wikipedia places in a Silicon Valley city, with the headcount and revenue printed in their infobox and the year of each figure. Employees are global; revenue is the company's own reported revenue. Subsidiaries of another company in the list and companies whose infobox headquarters is outside the Valley are left out to avoid double counting, so well-known brands that are owned by a larger group do not appear on their own. Click a column to sort.

By number of employees

By revenue (top 40)

By city

Private companies often publish neither figure, so absence from a ranking does not mean a company is small. Figures are not audited by us; check the company's own filings through the official site linked in the table.

Jobs and pay

METRO (San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara) Official statistics Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 · BLS Employment Projections 2025–35 · BEA Regional Price Parities · Data: OEWS May 2025; projections 2025–35; RPP 2024

The San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara metropolitan area has 1,134,970 jobs in the BLS wage survey (May 2025) and a median pay of $84,050 across all occupations, 65% above the national median ($84,050 against $50,980). The unemployment rate of the metro area was 4.2% (2026M09). The price level is 110.4 against 100 for the country (BEA Regional Price Parities).

There is no official count of open private-sector jobs in the Valley. Most are posted on employers' own careers pages (see the official websites in the company table). Federal vacancies in California: 1,717 postings →

Professions in demand: concentrated here and growing nationally

Occupations with at least 2,500 jobs in the metro area where the share of workers is at least 1.4 times the national share (location quotient), with the national growth outlook to 2035 and national openings a year. The first columns say where the Valley is strong; the last two say whether the occupation is growing.

Most jobs

Highest pay (at least 500 jobs)

OEWS pay above $239,200 a year is shown as "≥ $239,200" (BLS top code). It covers wages and salaries; stock grants and bonuses are not part of it, and in the Valley they can be a large part of total compensation.

Living

CITY Official statistics and model estimate Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year (via Census Reporter) · NASA POWER climatology · Data: ACS 2020–2024; climatology 2001–2025

Across the 22 Valley cities with ACS data, median rent runs from $2,301 in Gilroy to $3,501 in Foster City, with a middle value of $3,016 a month. The median home value is above the ACS reporting ceiling of $2,000,000 in several cities (shown as $2,000,001), so the real figure there is higher. Median household income runs from $133,107 to $250,001.

Where you live changes your commute more than your salary: use the shares of workers who drive alone, take transit, or work from home. The July temperature is the average of the month (°F). Click a city for its full guide.

Does the salary work? (estimate)

Official links: living in the Valley

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: Fair Market Rents
• California Franchise Tax Board: income tax rates

These links go to official sources and open in a new window. The first one is the government's or company's own site as listed in Wikidata (property "official website"); check it before relying on it.

Getting there

Work authorisation is federal. The main routes used by technology workers are the H-1B (specialty occupation, employer-sponsored, with an annual cap and a lottery for new petitions), L-1 (intracompany transfer), O-1 (extraordinary ability), TN (Canadian and Mexican professionals) and F-1 OPT/STEM OPT for graduates of US universities. Rules, fees and processing times change; always read the official pages before acting.

Official links: visas and work authorisation

• USCIS: working in the United States
• U.S. Department of State: employment visas
• U.S. Department of Labor: foreign labor certification
• USCIS: H-1B specialty occupations

These links go to official sources and open in a new window. The first one is the government's or company's own site as listed in Wikidata (property "official website"); check it before relying on it.

More on permits and first steps is in the country guide, and the page for your country is under Working in the US from your country.

Airports and transit

The Valley is served by San José Mineta (SJC) and San Francisco (SFO), with Oakland (OAK) across the bay. Public transport includes the Caltrain commuter railway along the peninsula, VTA buses and light rail in Santa Clara County, and BART, which reaches the Valley at Fremont, Milpitas and Berryessa. Routes and extensions change, so check the operators' own pages.

Official links: getting around

• San José Mineta International Airport
• San Francisco International Airport
• Caltrain
• Santa Clara VTA
• BART
• 511 Bay Area: regional transit information

These links go to official sources and open in a new window. The first one is the government's or company's own site as listed in Wikidata (property "official website"); check it before relying on it.

For daily commuting patterns, the table in the Living tab shows, city by city, how many workers drive alone, ride transit, work from home or travel 45 minutes or more.

Difficulties and tips

The difficulties, in numbers

• Housing cost. The median rent across the Valley cities is $3,016 a month, and the metro price level is 110.4 (US = 100).
• Long commutes. In the typical Valley city 15.2% of workers commute 45 minutes or more.
• Visa dependence. Among the Valley cities, the share of residents born abroad ranges from 21.6% to 55.4%, so many workers are on or have been through the visa routes above; sponsorship rules decide how fast you can change employer.
• Competition and pay structure. Wages are high but concentrated in a few occupations; part of pay is often stock, whose value changes. The OEWS tables above show wages only.

Practical tips (editorial, not official)

• Compare the whole package, not the salary: rent share, commute and taxes decide what you keep.
• Use the city table to trade commute against rent: living further away lowers rent but raises commute time.
• Check the company's own careers page and, for visas, the official USCIS pages; the dates and rules there override anything written here.
• Look at the occupations table: roles with a high location quotient have many employers competing for the same skills, which usually helps job seekers.
• Remote work is common in the Valley: the work-from-home column shows how many residents already do it.

Data centers

DATA CENTERS Crowd-sourced map data, not an official register Source: OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL): telecom=data_center and building=data_center · Data: queried 07/11/2026

The Valley, and Santa Clara in particular, hosts one of the densest clusters of data centers in the country because of its fibre connections and its customers. There is no official public register of data centers with size or capacity. The table below lists 77 facilities that volunteers have mapped in OpenStreetMap inside the Valley; it is a floor, not a complete count, and says nothing about megawatts or jobs.

By operator

Every mapped facility

Jobs in data centers (technicians, electricians, facilities engineers) appear in the occupation tables of the San Jose metro area, but BLS does not separate them. Capacity and employment per facility: planned, only when an official or company source exists.

FAQ

Sources

Sources

• BLS OEWS (wages and employment by occupation, May 2025)
• BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
• BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics
• BLS JOLTS
• BLS State and Metro Area Employment
• Census Bureau American Community Survey (via Census Reporter)
• BEA GDP by state and Regional Price Parities
• IRS 2026 tax adjustments
• U.S. Department of Labor, minimum wage by state
• Tax Foundation state income tax rates 2026
• USAJOBS
• USCIS
• U.S. Department of State, visas
• NASA POWER climatology
• GeoNames / Census Gazetteer (coordinates)