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Growth Happening Here
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Growth Happening Here

By Sharon Simonson More Texas cites are growing faster than any others in the nation, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. But the East Bay's Dublin and Milpitas, with land to develop and existing or coming mass transit to job-centers, are adding lots of new residents too.
San Jose City Adds Vietnamese-American Small Business Advisor
Demographics, The Web

San Jose City Adds Vietnamese-American Small Business Advisor

By Sharon Simonson Xuan Ha, former director of San Jose's Vietnamese American Business Association, has joined the city of San Jose’s Small Business Ally Program as a small business coach. She speaks fluent Vietnamese. The Business Ally program helps San Jose entrepreneurs find the best location and then navigate the city permit process to complete remodeling or other work including new business registration. Immigrants own about half of San Jose’s 56,000 small businesses—those employing fewer than 35 people. Vietnamese-Americans, including refugees, immigrants and their U.S.-born children, constitute the largest Asian population in the city of San Jose with 104,000 people, according to the most recent Census Bureau statistics. Seventy-five percent are foreign-born and near...
Berkeley Workers Bike More Than Anyone Else
Demographics, The Web

Berkeley Workers Bike More Than Anyone Else

By Sharon Simonson A greater proportion of people bike to work in Berkeley than in any other American city with a population of 100,000 or more, according to new calculations from the U.S. Census Bureau. Work commuters in San Francisco and Oakland are also among the most likely to turn to pedal power compared to their peers in other large American cities. To commemorate Bike to Work Week from May 16 to May 20, the bureau ranked the top 20 U.S. cities based on what percentage of their workforce ride a bike to work. Not quite one in 10 Berkeley workers ride bicycles to their jobs. That compares to about 5 percent of workers in San Francisco and slightly less in the East Bay’s Oakland. No South Bay city made the Top 20 list. College towns appear most prominently in the ranking...
San Francisco Leads Nation in Employment Gains in Large Counties
Demographics, The Web

San Francisco Leads Nation in Employment Gains in Large Counties

Information businesses, including software publishers, and building construction are setting the job-growth pace By Sharon Simonson New economy is driving old in San Francisco, making the county the fastest growing in the country as measured by annual employment gains. Travis County, home to Austin, Texas, and another U.S. technology industry center, is the country’s second-fastest growing. Information businesses are among those adding jobs in the home county of the University of Texas, but businesses in other sectors are adding them faster. According to industry data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau on the 50 largest U.S. counties by employment, companies that specialize in Internet publishing including online software sellers and web-search portals are adding workers...
California Has the Most Foreign-Born Residents
Demographics, The Web

California Has the Most Foreign-Born Residents

By Sharon Simonson A record 42.2 million foreign-born people live in the United States making up 13.2 percent of the population, according to new findings from The Pew Research Center based on U.S. Census data. With 27 percent of California's total population foreign-born — or not quite 10.5 million people — the state has more immigrants numerically than any other state and the greatest proportion of its total residents who are immigrants. One in five people (or nearly that many) living in New York, New Jersey, Florida and Nevada also are foreign-born. West Virginia has the lowest portion of foreign-born people at 1.4 percent of the state's total 1.8 million residents, Pew reports. The number of foreign-born people living in the U.S. has grown fourfold since 1960 when not quite 10 millio...
Judge Fines Apple, Cisco, eBay Contractors for H-1B Cheating
Demographics, The Web

Judge Fines Apple, Cisco, eBay Contractors for H-1B Cheating

Federal judge says Scopus Consulting Group and Orian Engineers abused the H-1B worker-visa program by underpaying foreign workers, depressing regional wages and unfairly undercutting competitors By Sharon Simonson Chief Administrative Law Judge Stephen R. Henley ordered two businesses owned by Kishore Kumar to pay 21 workers $84,000 in back wages and $103,000 in fines to the federal government after investigators for the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour division found both companies failed to follow federal foreign-worker visa rules. Both worker-placement companies provided workers to Cupertino-based Apple Inc., and San Jose-based Cisco Systems Inc. and eBay Inc., according to the government. "Some of the country's most cutting-edge, successful organizations benefit from underp...
Census Bureau: English Not Required
Demographics, The Web

Census Bureau: English Not Required

More than half of the San Jose metro doesn't speak English at home; 370,000 residents aged 5 and older don't speak English By Sharon Simonson More than 2.5 million residents of the San Francisco Bay Area speak a language other than English at home, a vastly greater proportion of the region’s 5.9 million residents than in the nation at large, according to new U.S. Census Bureau research. More than a million Bay Area residents also say they don’t speak English very well. The data, which encompasses the U.S. population age 5 and older, is among the most comprehensive the Census Bureau has ever published on languages spoken in the United States. The research found that 60.4 million U.S. residents, or 21 percent of the 291 million people age 5 and older, speak one of at least 350 langu...
Pew Research: Immigration to U.S. Is Slowing
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Pew Research: Immigration to U.S. Is Slowing

At the 50-year mark, the Pew Research Center has produced a 100-year history and projection of U.S. immigration, beginning with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and ending 50 years from now in 2065. The U.S. foreign-born population has gone from less than 10 million people 50 years ago to nearly 45 million people today and is projected to continue to rise sharply in the next 50 years to 78 million people. Hispanics as a share of the nation's foreign-born grew from 14 percent in 1965 to 48 percent in 2005. Their proportion is now falling, even as the proportion of Asians rises. In 2055, Pew projects that 36 percent of the nation's foreign-born will be Asian and 34 percent Hispanic. The number of new immigrants coming to the U.S. peaked at eight million arriving from 2000 throu...