Pessimism in Silicon Valley

''Nobody in our community is feeling optimistic," said Chavarin, 38, who coordinates youth programs at a San Jose community center. ''Cars are in the streets, abandoned. Crime is up. If you call the non-emergency police number, it takes forever. I'm very worried about the future."

Silicon Valley's optimistic entrepreneurs and venture capitalists insist a rebound is around the corner, despite all the shuttered office parks and business plans that anticipate hiring more employees in India, Russia, or China than in California.

They point to nebulous indicators: Traffic jams are returning. Office vacancy rates have stabilized at about 17 percent. The moneyed crowd has to wait for seats again at posh Palo Alto restaurants.

But others are skeptical. Workers in the Bay Area are the most pessimistic in the nation, with 27 percent worried about losing their job, according to a July survey by staffing firm Hudson Highland Group. Only 18 percent of workers nationwide share that fear.

Santa Clara County -- which comprises San Jose and the corporate hubs of Cupertino and Palo Alto -- has lost 231,000 jobs since the peak of the dot-com bubble in December 2000, according to a recent report from San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales.

By contrast, the entire state of Ohio has lost about 200,000 jobs in the same period.

Some say that unlike Midwestern manufacturing jobs, Silicon Valley's lost positions were little more than ''bubble jobs" -- superfluous titles given to caffeinated college grads and programmers during the dot-com boom. But restaurants and retailers still miss the ripple effect of those high-tech paychecks.

Seattle, Boston, Denver and Austin, Texas -- all of which attracted technology companies during the boom -- also are facing longer and sharper busts than cities with more diversified economies, said Creighton University professor Ernie Goss.

''Cutting-edge tech hubs have to reinvent themselves every cycle," said Goss, a scholar-in-residence at the Congressional Budget Office studying the economic impact of technology. ''That reinvention and dynamism give them life -- and death. This is a natural cycle that can be . . . brutally painful."