For the first time in four years, Silicon Valley had a net increase in jobs, in one sign that the U.S.'s technology capital may be turning the corner after a long economic downturn.

That is the conclusion of an annual report by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a nonprofit group representing businesses and government agencies in the San Francisco and San Jose, Calif., area.

"For the past five years, people have been wondering what's going on in Silicon Valley" and whether the region would lose its premier high-tech status, said Russell Hancock, Joint Venture's president and chief executive. "Our report shows this has been a long period of restructuring. We've finally stopped losing jobs, and it's the start of a turnaround."

The study, which covers an array of data, from the number of patents generated from the area to venture-capital investments to educational factors, found other positives. Increasingly, Silicon Valley is displaying a concentration of high-end creative design and technology jobs, which comprise 14% of total regional employment, disproportionately higher than the 2% share of total employment in the U.S.

In addition, per-capita income in Silicon Valley rose for the second consecutive year, to $56,633, well above the nation's per-capita income of nearly $35,000. And the area's total population increased for the first time in several years, highlighting how people are migrating into Silicon Valley again after several years of population declines.

The turnaround remains nascent, however. Silicon Valley's net job gain between 2004 and 2005 was just 2,000 jobs, the report says. The region remains well below its highs of 2000 in several areas, including average pay per employee and venture-capital investments. Still, viewed over a 10-year period, Silicon Valley is stronger today in many respects than it was in 1995.

"We're still not at the levels of 2000, but that was an aberration," said Doug Henton, a co-author of the report.

He said the data suggest "a new face of Silicon Valley," one that is moving away from an engineering-oriented economy to an idea-oriented one that demands highly creative people to produce technology that conveys an "experience," such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod digital music player. Companies that epitomize this new "idea economy" include Apple and Google Inc., he said.

Indeed, some of those companies were big generators of job growth and wealth in Silicon Valley during the past year. Google, for example, boosted its employee ranks to 4,989 people in September 2005, up 65% from 3,021 at the end of 2004. Google's stock also more than doubled last year. Apple's stock, too, more than doubled last year.