Having fallen to 5.4% in April, the lowest rate since June of 2008, the unemployment rate in San Francisco fell another 0.2 points to 5.2% in May as the number of employed San Francisco residents increased by 1,200 to 455,900 and the number of unemployed fell by 600 to 25,200. The unemployment rate in Marin and San Mateo fell to 4.5% and 4.9% respectively.
The unemployment rate in San Francisco peaked at 10.1 percent in January of 2010 when 49,400 fewer San Francisco residents were employed than today.
Employment in San Francisco is currently up by 22,100 workers on a year-over-year basis versus 20,900 the month before but remains 8,400 workers below a December 2000 dot-com peak at which point the unemployment rate measured 3 percent.
The unadjusted unemployment rate in California fell to 8.1% in May as the number of employed increased by 136,300 and the number of unemployed fell by 68,600.
∙ Nearly 50,000 More Employed In San Francisco Since 2010 [SocketSite]
∙ San Francisco Employment Trends And Dot-Com Context [SocketSite]
∙ Monthly Labor Force Data for Counties: May 2013 (Preliminary) [EDD]
The rate is much higher. Many people are not pulling unemployment and are unemployed or underemployed.
^ That’s the kind of statement that cannot really be proven nor disproved.
But a few numbers will give us a hint to whether this is an accurate representation of reality or simply another uber-bearish statement (aka: there are pills for that you know?): the number of people being employed is going up. And it reaching the crazy levels of Y2K. That by itself shows that the number of people who gave up looking for a job is much much less than the number of new people finding jobs.
Great, now we just need to build housing so all these people have somewhere to live and improve public transit so people can actually get to their jobs
The rate is much higher. Many people are not pulling unemployment and are unemployed or underemployed.
This represents a clear misunderstanding about where the unemployment rate data comes from. It has nothing to do with the number of people collecting unemployment, and is an entirely different survey – which is why we can sometimes see what look to be contradictory results.
^ If new developments being built on the Market street corridor sell for $1000/sf or more (like the Castro ICON building’s asking prices, or other recent new buildings in central SF), then more new developments will pop up. Add to that new rental supply from NEMA or the Trinity development to capture the increases in rent of the past 3 years.
Increase the incentive and new housing will soon be built.
+1 anon and lol
It would be nice to see something substantial after a statement like Marten’s. However, it will be interesting to see how things develop over the next year to three. As great as things are right now, you have to wonder how many car-sharing services (uber, lyft, sidecar, zipcar), and video collaboration (blue jeans, fuzebox, etc.) startups the market can realistically support. While I don’t think they’ll be anything on the scale of what we saw w/the first dot com implosion (lived through it in ’00 and the subsequent exodus from SF in ’02 and ’03 of ~12K people each year), a slight correction is probably something more realistic to anticipate and shouldn’t be a big surprise.
sfjhawk,
I agree that some companies could seem to be in apparent saturation mode, but do not forget that our day-to-day reality is limited to SF or the SV. The world is a much bigger place with lots of room to play with.
I recall a friend who introduced me to Netflix rentals in late 2001 or 2002. He was telling me all his friends in the SV were subscribing. It seemed like a good idea, but would Netflix move past a million or so dedicated geeks with a personal grudge against price-gouging cable companies? Fast-forward 10 years later…
My point is: these businesses are based here, but they can get their revenue nationally or globally. Given the right business model, they can expand exponentially and much of the wealth created / jobs added are right here in the BA. This is a new gilded age for SF. Enjoy it.
“The world is a much bigger place with lots of room to play with.”
Agreed on this point: I travel enough for work and personal reasons to realize that (my handle should give away where my roots are) we are in a unique environment and are also in a great position to ride waves much bigger than than the ones that are more app-centric / socially-based (i.e. industrial Internet / big data). All that being said, volatility and churn is inherently part of the tech industry. I’m not being the uber-bear (if anything more bullish), just tempering with what we’ve seen in the past and what should be considered par for the course.
Actually, the EDD’s unemployment number doesn’t count people with no job who aren’t actively seeking work. And there are a few ways you can quantitatively look at underemployment. People working part time who are seeking full time employment is one measure. People holding college or advanced degrees employed in jobs that don’t require a degree is another.
But Tipster, anon, lyqwyd, sffponzischeme, satchel, dude, michael and co all said that San Francisco was losing population and dying? Why were they given so
much space to rant then? Odd.
San Francisco has had declines in population, both in recent years and in the past. For decades the city had less people than the 1950s. Glad to see it going up now.
(Tipster types will be back when interest rates return to historic averages)
Yeah but those guys all knew exactly what VC was doing. They even told us so. So how could they have possibly been wrong?
@Lies
“lyqwyd… said that San Francisco was losing population and dying”
find a single quote from me suggesting anything of the sort. You can’t because I’ve never said such a thing, or anything even remotely close to it.
I guess it’s a lot easier when you don’t have to base your comments on facts or reality.
Same thing for my previous San Fronzyscheme self. I was bearish for US RE and SF RE, but I have always been upbeat for SF. Its Real Estate was bound for a big correction in 2007-2008 but that was the extent of my bearishness. I estimated a 40-45% potential drop, but at 25% I felt the downturn couldn’t go much deeper and I switched to become lol/bull. I have even put my money where my mouth is.