What percentage of Silicon Valley companies have more than 20
employees?  Define "Silicon Valley" how you'd like, or use the area
within a 30-mile radius of San Jose, CA.

Hello, Steve. 
The short answer is approximately 18%. The long answer follows.

To find out what percentage of Silicon Valley companies have more than
20 employees, I visited the State of California, Business Employment
Development Department website ( http://www.calmis.ca.gov/ ).

They’ve got a wealth of Labor Market Information, which I searched by
geography.  The San Jose Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (Santa
Clara County) represents the bulk of the area considered Silicon
Valley, so I looked at those specific stats. The surrounding counties,
parts of which are often included in definitions of Silicon Valley,
have much smaller populations, so numbers for Santa Clara County are
reasonably representative of the whole.

State of California, Employment Development Department, Labor Market
Information
Third Quarter Payroll and Number of Businesses by Size Category
Classified by County for California Third Quarter, 2000
http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/indsize/0sfcoru.htm

From the information given, we find that in Santa Clara County has:

Total # of businesses:    48,996
Businesses with 
  0-4 employees:          26,908
  5-9 employees:           7,833
  10-19 employees:         5,609
  20-49 employees:         4,860
  50-99 employees:         2,051
  100-249 employees:       1,178
  250-499 employees:         329
  500-999 employees:         139
  1000+ employees:            89

So, a total of 8,646 businesses have 20+ employees, or approximately
18% of the total.

Note that the State of California bases its numbers on the
unemployment insurance that it collects from businesses, so the
figures may not include self-employed and family-owned businesses. As
a result, the number of small business may be underestimated.

Search Terms

State of California employment information
://www.google.com/search?q=state+of+california+employment+information

Hope this answers your question.

Best,

Zrica

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Clarification of Answer by zrica-ga on 01 May 2002 15:05 PDT

Another helpful site

San Jose Office of Economic Development
http://www.do-biz-here.com/

Excellent.  Fast and accurate.  Thanks zrica.

If you haven't seen it yet, you may want to take a crack at:

UNIX-using companies in Silicon Valley

	https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=8102

...since you now have part of the answer for it.