The metro area defined by the US Census as San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara is the proverbial heart of Silicon Valley and the most expensive place to live in the US. Goods and services are about 27% more expensive than the national average in San Jose, and the median home sale price is over $1 million.
But San Jose isn't all engineers and programmers flush with cash (or stock options). A dire affordable housing shortage has left teachers, landscapers, security officers, and thousands of minimum-wage workers virtually homeless.
Here's a look inside San Jose:
The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro is home to nearly two million people.
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Two counties make up the metro area: Santa Clara and San Benito.
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Its the second-most populous metro in the Bay Area behind San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, which is often synonymous with Silicon Valley and tech culture.
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But to locals, San Jose is the epicenter of Silicon Valley. Its sprawling suburbs are home to employees of the biggest tech companies ...
... like Google in nearby Mountain View ...
... Facebook in Menlo Park ...
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... and Apple in Cupertino, a city west of San Jose.
Cisco Systems and eBay, both headquartered in the city of San Jose, are also two of the areas biggest employers.
"Everyone you meet is directly working in tech, working for a tech startup, or working for a company that funds technology companies," Julia David, a 25-year-old contract employee at PayPal and MBA student at San Jose State University, told Business Insider.
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But that doesnt mean everyone has a technology job, she said. "While engineers and programmers mostly dominate the population, people often forget that there are a lot of other positions in a tech company," said David, who works on PayPals social innovation team.
"Some of my friends are engineers, but I also have a lot of friends in finance, accounting, marketing, you name it," David said.
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David said "one of the biggest positives" of the tech industry is the "economic stability" it brings high-paying jobs and an ever-growing demand for tech talent keep the job market strong.
San Joses economy is the fastest-growing in the US, and tech is a huge driver. In 2017, the areas GDP grew 7.6%, to more than $275 billion or $137,752 per capita.
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The unemployment rate in the San Jose metro was 2.5% as of December 2018, compared to 3.9% nationally.
Sources: BLS , American Community Survey
San Joses most popular jobs include mechanical engineer, software engineer, and senior software engineer, according to PayScale. They pay anywhere between $77,268 and $134,718 a year.
More than half (57%) of all households in the San Jose metro earn six figures the median household brings in $117,474 a year.
About one-quarter of households earn over $200,000 a year ...
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... but thats still not enough to buy a house.
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Many residents, including Davids family, have been around since the dot-com boom of the 1990s ...
... but the areas skyrocketing home prices have pushed many others out.
Over the last 10 years, the median home value in the San Jose metro has more than doubled from $612,000 to $1.27 million.
Over that same time period, the median sale price jumped from $431,000 to $1.05 million.
Meanwhile, the US median sale price increased marginally, from $163,000 to $226,000.
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In San Jose, buyers need an annual income of at least $257,247 to qualify for a mortgage with 20% down, according to the National Association of Realtors latest data.
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About 70% of San Jose homeowners have a mortgage, and they spend about $3,261 on monthly housing costs, which includes taxes, insurance, and utilities.
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About 46% of homes in the San Jose metro are valued at more than $1 million.
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Last year, San Jose suburbs appeared in nine of 10 spots on Redfins ranking of the hottest neighborhoods in America. The annual list tracks which areas have seen a rising interest from buyers.
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But San Jose doesnt make an appearance in the top 10 this year, as more residents migrate out of expensive coastal cities, according to Redfin.
At the metro level, Los Altos, a city in Santa Clara County, was named San Joses hottest neighborhood for 2019.
Nearly 63% of homes in Los Altos sold for above asking price in November, according to the latest data available from Redfin.
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Properties in Los Altos are palatial by California standards. The median sale price is just under $3 million.
Rent prices are outsized, too. Between November 2010 and January 2019, median rent for a one-bedroom apartment rose from $1,520 to $2,565.
"Downtown San Jose is expensive and can be unaffordable if you live in a major apartment complex or if you choose to live alone, but rent can be thousands of dollars cheaper in San Jose than it is in San Francisco," David said.
There is relief for renters who know where to look, she added. David and a roommate split $2,800 monthly rent for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with access to a pool, gym, and recreation classes. Its just a few blocks from downtown San Jose.
A San Jose landlord drew criticism earlier this year when Mercury News reported he rents out a studio apartment on his property to a friends two cats for $1,500 a month.
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With many non-tech employees struggling to afford the exorbitant cost of housing, some people found the story absurd. A housing expert working to end homelessness in the area called it "peak Silicon Valley."
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Nearly 47% of renters in the San Jose metro, representing a plurality, spend 30% or more of their income on rent. The US Census considers these households "burdened."
Thousands of teachers, landscapers, security officers, and minimum-wage workers who cant afford rent have created a new economic class in Silicon Valley: working homeless.
About 3% of San Jose residents live in mobile homes, vans, RVs, or on boats.
"In San Jose, you will find glassblowers, hairdressers, soon-to-be-grandpas, grocery-store clerks, security guards and local activists, many of whom would leave this city if they could, but are bound by duty to aging parents or custody terms, living paycheck to paycheck and hoping to make ends meet," Meg Furey wrote for The Bold Italic, a San Francisco-based culture magazine.
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But its not just housing costs eating up paychecks. San Joses cost of living is the highest of any metro in the US. As of 2016, goods and services were about 27% more expensive than the national average.
In spite of its high cost of living, US News & World Report ranked San Jose No. 17 out of 125 metro areas on its 2018 annual best places to live in America list ...
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... but thats a far cry from its No. 3 ranking the year before. Its still the top-ranked city in California on the list.
And though San Jose has cemented its status as a hotbed for innovation and entrepreneurship, "not everyone here is consumed by capitalist pursuits," according to Furey.
San Jose State University, the founding campus of the California State University system, is located downtown. It had about 35,000 students enrolled last fall.
The universitys top undergraduate program by enrollment is psychology, while the most popular graduate program is library and information sciences, followed by software engineering.
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"In fact," Furey wrote, "even though San Jose is the tenth most populous city in the United States, it will rarely seem that way, as the streets are almost always empty, giving many areas the feeling of a place forgotten by time and strangely preserved."
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