San Mateo County economy is stable

But since then, limited job figures have been made available due to the federal shutdown at the end of last year. Since EDD released the August numbers, Russell Hancock, president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, said it doesn’t seem like much has changed from an economic standpoint.

“We’re not a growing economy, but we’re not a shrinking one either,” Hancock said. “We just need to understand we’re in a stationary place, and I suspect we’ll be here for awhile.”

Data from WARN notices show there was a nearly 25% drop in announced layoffs in San Mateo County between 2024 and 2025 — going from about 4,100 in 2024 to 3,150 in 2025 — and an even steeper drop from some of the workforce reductions in 2023. While Meta announced it was laying off about 300 employees in December, the announcements throughout the year have come from a range of industries, including biotechnology and health care, and are not as concentrated in the tech sector as they were a few years prior. As of September, the county’s unemployment rate was slightly higher than the year prior — going from 3.6% to 4% — though it was still the lowest in the state.

AI investment also continues, but the economic impacts in the county still aren’t very tangible. Menlo Park is seeing more AI firms, however, the majority still tend to be concentrated in San Francisco and Palo Alto — though, even strong investment in neighboring counties can have real economic impacts on the county. Bay Area-based companies received about 75% of total AI funding in the United States in 2025, according to Crunchbase data, much of which included billion-dollar deals to some of the dominant companies, such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

But even with the massive funding infusions, the area’s economy doesn’t seem to be growing at a proportional rate. While the technology isn’t eliminating many jobs in the region — at least not yet — it’s not generating the number of new jobs one would typically expect given the funding levels, Hancock said.

“The funny thing about AI is that you don’t need as many people. The goal of AI is to have as few people as possible,” Hancock said. “We may start seeing real strange things, like billion-dollar unicorns that have 10 employees.”