San Francisco Labor Force, Employment and Unemployment Since 2000

The number of people living in San Francisco with a job continues to climb and hit a new all-time high of 524,100 in April, an increase of 2,000 from the month before.

There are currently 20,300 more people living in the city with paychecks than at the same time last year and 58,600 more than were employed in the city at the height of the dot-com peak in 2000, at which point the unemployment rate measured 3 percent with a labor force of 480,000, versus 542,500 last month, according to California’s Employment Development Department.

The number of employed residents in San Francisco has increased by 87,400 since January of 2010, a 20 percent jump in a little over five years.  And the unemployment rate in San Francisco has dropped to 3.4 percent, the lowest unemployment rate since 2000 and down from over 10 percent in January 2010.

The unemployment rates in Marin and San Mateo have dropped to 3.3 percent and 3.2 percent respectively and the unemployment rate in Contra Costa County has dropped to 4.7 percent, down from 5.8 percent at the same time last year.

The un-adjusted unemployment rate in California is down to 6.1 percent.

20 thoughts on “Employment In S.F. Continues To Climb”
  1. There ought to be a way to link job growth with a corresponding growth in housing. While the City is doing well – it is often at the expense of the others. Quality of life is getting worse for employees either stuck in ever longer traffic jams or sitting hours on broken unreliable unsafe transit systems. The City either needs to build more affordable housing or limit job growth.

    1. How about a 5 year moratorium on new office construction while plans for corresponding housing development and transit improvement are put in place and acted on – or the moratorium does not get lifted.

      The condo towers being built SOMA are not for regular office workers.

    2. “Limit job growth.”

      Ok, let’s start with yours. Quit.

      Oh, don’t like applying limiting jobs when it comes to YOUR job? Well, neither do the people getting new jobs here.

  2. Limit job growth? Affordable housing? The free markets seem to be working just fine. The city needs to focus on relaxing some of its ridiculous initiatives to allow developers to build to meet demand. And meaningfully solve the homeless problem. And build more underground transit to connect downtown to the rest of the city. Buses and bike lanes are 5-10 year solutions. It’s a big city and we’re only using a small part of it commercially.

  3. What I’d like is if you’d include employment statistics for the East Bay as well when you post these things. It’s not like we’re any further away than Marin, or any less connected. Sorry I don’t have any pointless bickering about job moratoriums to contribute today. But if you could eliminate mine by 2:30 or so I could go to the movies.

    1. What I’d like is if you’d include employment statistics for the East Bay as well when you post these things.

      Done. We’ll run a detailed East Bay employment overview next week as well.

      1. Hear, hear. Consider opening a sister SocketSite for the East Bay too. Things are Happening over here.

    1. What do you mean Prop M is not working, new office space is capped? Oh, you mean it’s not doing anything beneficial? Well, it never was…

  4. Transit infrastructure needs to climb as well. Rail, self driving cars, another east west highway connecting the Bay Area with Sacramento, a new bridge across the bay near SFO. Northern California is suffering from all of this gridlock. It doesn’t need to be this way, but people assume things can’t get better and that gridlock is just a face of life.

  5. Ironic thing is this is happening despite the Bay Area not growing as fast as many metro areas. Dallas and Houston are larger metro areas and Atlanta will surpass the Bay Area at some point.

    A Forbes article I think it was said the Bay Area should be at 10 or 11 million people now but for the restrictions on growth. Those restriction can be a good thing – imagine the traffic mess if there were 11 million people here now.

    The Bay Area is around 7.5 million people and slowly growing. It gets compared to LA and its noted that the Bay Area is growing faster than LA now, but the real comparison needs to be made to Dallas, Atlanta, Houston and Seattle.

    1. can you elaborate on why this is ironic? Or, more specifically, how higher population growth rates should equal great job growth? I’ve worked (and still do) in Texas and yes, it is a high growth region, but its economy is definitely more dependent on other sectors (oil and energy for instance which isn’t doing as well w/lower oil prices), than the Bay Area.

  6. But then, there was this earthquake at the beginning of the last century. This might explain why the premier estuary on the California coast doesn’t have 20-30 million people. Perhaps.

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