Job fair lines in Midtown from 2009 (Photo: wsws.org)

Wired.com published an interesting piece last week under the headline "Silicon Valley Creating Jobs, But Not For Everyone." The article looked at how the Valley's unemployment rate has ballooned beyond the national average--up to 8.8 percent in June--despite the growing number of jobs in the tech sector.

Estimates show a similar pattern in New York City. In June, the city's unemployment jumped to 10 percent, the same abysmal peak we hit in the recession three years ago, even as employment in the tech sector grew 30 percent between 2005 and 2010. 

The growing ranks of jobless New Yorkers makes it hard to pity Silicon Alley's hiring woes. Not that you'd know it by talking to them. Today, the Daily News trots out the umpteenth article about six-figure salaries and the difficulty in finding engineering talent.

The paper says starting salaries for web developers are around $65,000 without a college degree, with more experienced devs commanding compensation north of $100,000. Betabeat found even higher numbers when we dug into the recruiting problem last year.

But one of the Daily News sources sound a little tone deaf as to how those numbers might appear to his fellow residents:

"I get so frustrated. I hear people say the job market is bad," said Gabriel Shaoolian, CEO of Blue Fountain Media, a web design and digital marketing company in Manhattan.

"I say, 'Really? I have the opposite problem.'"

Somehow we imagine the job market is filled with people much more frustrated than Mr. Shaoolian.