Bay Area executives are showing increased confidence that the region's economy is stabilizing, according to a survey released Thursday by the Bay Area Council, a public-policy advocacy organization.
"The best place to look for a job over the next six months is in San Francisco, on the Peninsula and in Silicon Valley," Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, said in a statement.
The council releases a quarterly survey that measures confidence on a 100-point scale. This winter's survey found that executives' confidence was 61 out of 100, which is three points up from the last survey.
The report includes responses from 485 executives throughout the nine Bay Area counties, and survey questions included whether companies expected to hire new employees.
According to data collected in February and March, 41 percent of companies that employ more than 500 people expect to hire new employees in the next six months, and 42 percent of companies that employ more than 50 people also expect to be hiring in the same time period.
In San Francisco County, unemployment increased from 9.2 percent to 9.5 percent in January, according to a March 4 report by the California Employment Development Department.
Santa Clara County's jobless numbers went from 10.4 percent to 10.5 percent in the same time period, according to the report.
