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Comment by hnriot | Hacker News Reader

I was surprised at the number who had a degree was less than the national average for California. I guess there's a lot of immigrant workers who don't achieve higher education levels which skews the perception living and working in the valley. States like Virginia and Kansas beat the national average, yet not california, that's really sad.

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I almost guarantee that any HN reader lives in a section of California that is radically unrepresentative of the state as a whole.

I live in Fresno County, it's very representative sadly

As there is pretty much no regional section of California that is representative of the State as a whole, that's a fairly easy guarantee to make.

i.e. San Francisco != California

Someone has to be below average. Dunno why it's sadder to have unemployed Californians than unemployed Virginians.

Even within the state of Virginia, look at the difference between Fairfax County and Portsmouth. It's comforting to think that your peers are "beating" the national average, and I think that something we miss when we read these graphs. A reminder about both ends of an average is something we need more in life.

because Silicon Valley is in California, it's supposed to be the world's hub of tech leaders. If we have a candidate pool that is so poorly educated it doesn't bode well for sustaining that technology lead.

Palo Alto has one of the highest levels of education in the country. The rest of the bay area ranks highly as well. However that entire region only makes up less than 20% of California's population. The rest of the state brings down the average.

52% of San Franciscans aged 25+ have Bachelors degrees or higher, which is much better than the state average of 30.5%

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