It’s been a tough year for Silicon Valley’s fabulously paid CEOs.

Their 2009 compensation was down nearly 5 percent, which, recession or no, can really put a crimp in your style. Even Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who as in all things did better than most, saw his annual pay refuse to budge past last year’s level: $84.5 million.

What’s a mogul to do?

The 155 CEOs on the Mercury News’ annual What the Boss Makes survey (total 2009 compensation: $579 million) can no doubt look ahead to better days. Corporate profits in the valley are up. And hey, even if the bosses get canned, they’re likely to leave with millions in severance. But the newspaper’s yearly exercise of flipping through the big shots’ financials with the help of research firm Equilar got me thinking about the rest of us. What are the rest of us making? How are we doing? What sort of days do we have to look forward to?

Statistically, you could argue that we did better than the bosses, though direct comparisons are hard to draw. According to Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network’s most recent economic index, our per capita income declined just under 3 percent in 2009. Take that, CEOs. Of course, the per capita figure was $62,000 in 2009, about what Larry Ellison made every 61/2 hours that year.

And the truth is, the past decade has been unkind to those of us who answer to those in the corporate suite, rather than sit in it.

“When the dot-com bust occurred,” says Cindy Chavez, executive director of the labor-aligned Working Partnerships USA, “we started down a trajectory that hasn’t quite changed for us. We have a lot of people in our community who have been underemployed for a very long time, or unemployed.”

It’s true. Employment in the valley is lagging below 1999 levels. More than 246,000 Silicon Valley jobs have disappeared since the beginning of the decade. And while the figure reflects jobs lost, it’s the people who lost the jobs that are feeling the pain. The early 2000s seem like a blur of second jobs, fallback jobs and no jobs at all. Between 2000 and 2008, median household income in the valley dropped by more than 6 percent, according to Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network’s most recent regional index. (Find it at www.jointventure.org.)

In the boom days the valley seemed like a place where the rich got richer and those who worked for them did pretty well, too. But now the valley’s narrative seems a little more muddled, a little less aspirational. Santa Clara County’s unemployment rate stands at 11.4 percent. If the valley’s condition is anything like the rest of the state’s, more than 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months.

More and more valley workers are striking out on their own as contractors or sole business proprietors, a trend that could reflect an entrepreneurial spirit, or maybe a certain desperation among the unemployed. Tracey Grose, a researcher who worked on Joint Venture’s index, says the increase in the self-employed illustrates the changing nature of work in the valley.

“It is becoming more tenuous as more and more people seem to be working independently as contractors,” says Grose, of Collaborative Economics in Mountain View. “That means they don’t have benefits and it’s definitely less secure going from contract to contract.”

No doubt, life is getting harder for plenty. Chavez’s outfit recently released “Life in the Valley Economy 2010,” a report (find it at www.wpusa.org) that includes statistics showing lower-paying jobs are replacing higher-paying jobs, that a significant number of valley workers don’t make enough to support a family of four and that the valley’s middle class is shrinking.

Chavez says it’s understandable that executives who take risks by building companies are well-paid. But she says that while all the rewarding is going on we must also recognize the importance of the middle class and put in place practices and policies that ensure a decent living for the valley’s workers.

Good point. After all, we’re all in this together. Aren’t we?

Contact Mike Cassidy at mcassidy@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5536. Follow him at Twitter.com/mikecassidy.