For the past decade, the soaring stock prices and nosebleed valuations of Silicon Valley’s IPOs and unicorns has been a boon for California, helping create a record budget surplus of almost $22 billion.

Yet this bonanza has occurred just as the state’s overall job creation, once among the country’s leaders, has slowed to a more middle of the road status, well below the rates for key competitors such as Nevada, Arizona, Washington State and Texas. On a GDP basis, according to the most recent federal data, Texas by the last quarter of 2018 was growing nearly three times as fast.Slower growth could expose California even more to its growing, and unhealthy, dependence on the relatively small, in terms of employment, tech sector.