San Francisco Employment and Labor Force

Following twelve straight months of growth and having hit an all-time high in October, employment in San Francisco was relatively unchanged in November as the labor force dipped by 100 and the number of city residents collecting a paycheck slipped by 200 to 481,700.

That’s 22,900 more residents employed in San Francisco than at the same time last year and 16,200 more than were employed in the city at the height of the dot-com peak in December 2000 when the unemployment rate measured 3 percent based on a labor force of 480,000, according to California’s Employment Development Department.

Having topped out at a little over 10 percent in January of 2010 when 74,000 fewer San Francisco residents were employed than today, the current unemployment rate in the city is around 4.4 percent, the lowest rate since 2008.

The unemployment rates in Marin and San Mateo were both unchanged last month, holding at 3.9 percent and 4.1 percent respectively, while the unadjusted unemployment rate for California ticked up for the second month in a row, from 7.0 to 7.1 percent.

8 thoughts on “San Francisco’s Record Employment Run Takes A Breather”
  1. This is expected and desired. Skyhigh rents and home prices must come down as normalization occur. Be grateful that SF is in a much better shape than it was but do not take the good economic times for granted. Just because a few techies made financial fortunes, it is not prudent to spend money unwisely. Same goes for government and wasting taxpayer dollars. A long time ago, I had asked my work supervisor (and mentor) how I should bill a file, she said, “bill it as though your mother was paying for it.” I was so scrupulous I probably ended up losing revenue for the firm. But her lesson stuck with me.

    1. It was the original dot com boom. So if you could type [html] [body] hello world [/body] [/html] then …. You’re hired !

      Not sure whether that totally accounts for the blip but it was indeed a difficult time to find real talent or office space.

      1. I recall a guy who we hired at my first dot-com as a product manager (for a breakthrough online payment company that didn’t pass its 3rd round of financing) and who had no real credentials whatsoever. He only had buzzwords, was able to namedrop some vague French celebrities but was so vague when I asked specifics. But he had the genius look, pausing 3 seconds before giving any kind of answer. Late 2001 the company was gone and I guess he’s back to spending his trust fund money.

        Dot-com #1 was so entertaining. Today’s kids are way too serious! It’s like they really want their companies to make money. Noobs.

        1. LOL! It was the same for all industries, not just tech. I never liked to interview potential hires (not my job, didn’t get paid for the time it took, and I wanted no part in hiring mistakes.) But it wasn’t difficult to discern real talent from the rest. DC1 had more stupid money flowing — it was entertaining indeed to see so many office hardware and Aeron chairs being auctioned off. My former firm moved to former tech. offices just to take advantage of the largesse left behind. DC2 is definitely much more fiscally conservative and it is harder to make a buck nowadays, notwithstanding increasingly onerous government interference.

    2. That is a one month ~50k adjustment by CA EDD. They have a formula for figuring out how many people are in the work force. One of the ingredients in the US Census. SF population grew by more than 50k from 1990 to 2000, per US Census.

      I think EDD had an undercount in the late 1990s and actual growth employment and labor force grew in 1996-2000 similar to 2010-2014, but AFAIK CA EDD hasn’t explained the that one-month adjustment.

  2. Do you still follow gov’t numbers? Believe in the CPI re inflation? Contrary to what you believe, being so esoteric is not helpful. It is like listening to the boy who cried recovery one too many times. Again, follow your own path. It may lead you to the same intersecting/meeting point, or not. It is your journey, not mine. I am a bystander, not the end result. You need to accept it.

  3. um, gov’t numbers such as the time from NIST and USNO, and the real-time earthquake feed from USGS, and the various weather numbers from NOAA’s National Weather Service, and …
    yes, ever since my magic 8 ball went on the fritz.
    only thing that would make any of these esoteric is the lack of education of far too many people.
    now the the Santa tracker from NORAD, that is esoteric, but then it is Santa’s journey, not mine.

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