This article won’t tell you anything you didn’t already know, but it’s interesting to see them admit it.  At least as far as the local economies go, things are much worse in the East Bay than in the SF or SJ Zones of Awesomeness.

South Bay expected to recover lost jobs by 2014; recovery slower in East Bay

By George Avalos, Oakland Tribune
Posted: 01/25/2012 05:48:06 PM PST, Updated: 01/25/2012 09:09:30 PM PST

The current economic boom will be robust enough for the South Bay to recover the jobs it lost during the recession by 2014 — but the East Bay and the San Francisco metro regions might need until at least 2015, the chief economist with the Bay Area Council Economic Institute said Wednesday.

“Every industry in the South Bay is growing except for construction and retail,” said Jon Haveman. “The East Bay is very much hurting, and it may continue to do so for a while.”

Haveman gave his divergent outlooks at a downtown Oakland conference sponsored by Torrey Pines Bank.

One big reason for the differing paces of recovery is that the East Bay tumbled into a much deeper economic abyss, an analysis of state Employment Development Department figures shows.

The article goes on to say that East Bay job growth during the oughties was fueled by the real estate boom: construction and the mortgage industry.  Alameda and Contra Costa Counties lost 105,000 jobs from peak employment in August, 2007.  Both San Francisco (defined as the City by the Bay plus Marin and San Mateo Counties) and the South Bay (undefined, but including at least Santa Clara County) lost much fewer jobs, which were each in turn a much smaller percentage of jobs lost.

And the conclusion of the article shows that the East Bay will be getting the trickle-down until they reinvent themselves as something other than manufacturing (gone), real estate (gone), or back-office space (still an option).

The best hope for an East Bay economic upswing may be to capture overflow tenants from its neighbors.

“Tech companies are filling spaces in the South Bay and rents are rising,” [director of a realty brokerage Edward] Del Beccaro said. “As office rents rise in San Francisco and Santa Clara County, you will see some companies migrate to the East Bay.”

Where do you see the job growth in the next few years?  Is President Gingrich going to have us all working on a Moon Colony Program?