The Bay Area has slowed its hiring pace by 25 percent since the coronavirus began in February, according to Joint Venture Silicon Valley and LinkedIn. (Photo by Jared Rodriguez/Truthout via Flickr)

Hiring in the Bay Area is down 25 percent since February when concerns over the coronavirus started ramping up in the region, according to Joint Venture Silicon Valley and data from LinkedIn.

Nationwide, hiring dropped 21 percent. Other metropolitan areas suffered greater declines than the Bay Area, with hiring in Chicago off 40 percent, Los Angeles down by 38 percent and hiring in Phoenix slipping 37 percent.

Hiring in all but one industry segment dropped in April. Hiring nationwide in the hardware and networking segment actually rose 2 percent, the data showed.

Keith Burbank is currently a fulltime reporter covering Alameda County and Oakland news for Bay City News. He has also worked on the Data Points project for Local News Matters, finding trends and stories about the region through data. In 2019, he was a California Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, producing a series about homeless deaths in Santa Clara County. He worked as a swing shift editor for the newswire for several years as well. Outside of journalism, Keith enjoys computer programming, math, economics and music.