There are jobs in California - as long as you have a degree in engineering

Or science or technology or mathematics. From 2001 to 2009, California "skill outflow" (sometimes dubbed the brain drain) averaged only 2.2 percent a year, a full percentage point lower than the national rate, according to a Milken Institute study that's being released this week. Skilled foreign-born workers are particularly interested in staying. "California's share of national high-tech employment has declined because the pie has grown bigger and the tech sector has expanded in other states," the report finds. "But the idea that high-skilled workers are leaving en masse is generally fiction." Well, for now. From the report:

While California has performed relatively well in retaining its highly skilled workers, this shouldn't give the state license to sit back and relax, especially when competition for talent is increasingly fierce. California's share of high-tech employment has been declining for two decades. At the same time, the national technology sector is growing bigger, more widespread and more important than ever to regional economic growth.

There's another far gloomier view from Joel Kotkin, who points out that Silicon Valley does a lousy job at job creation - in part because so much production is shipped overseas. From his essay:

You can feel pride, as an American and Californian, in the legacy of the likes of Steve Jobs but also believe our future cannot be salvaged by high-tech alone. Many of the country's greatest assets, for example, are physical; in California these include the best climate for any advanced region in the world, fertile soil, a prime location on the Pacific Rim and potentially huge fossil fuel energy reserves, which give it enormous competitive advantages. The green theocracy now in control of Sacramento, however, has little interest in these aspects of California.