Preliminary January labor force data counts for San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties puts the unemployment rate at 10.3%, 8.9% and 9.7% respectively, up 1.0 percentage points in San Francisco, 0.7 percentage points in Marin, and 0.8 percentage points in San Mateo.
On a revised basis, the number of unemployed in San Francisco increased by 4,500 (from 42,400 to 46,900) in January and the number of employed fell by 2,700 (from 410,400 to 407,700) as the labor force increased by 1,800 (from 452,800 to 454,600).
Overall California unemployment rose by a full percentage point to 13.2% as the labor force increased by 90,600 while employment fell by 106,800.
∙ Monthly Labor Force Data for Counties: January 201o (Preliminary) [EDD]
∙ San Francisco County Unemployment At 9.4 Percent In December [SocketSite]
Until this starts to move up we will tread water, a couple of years away from any sort of broad recovery, especially including in the commercial office market.
The residential market can move up at the higher end — because umemployment in that demographic niche is so much lower, but that is a limited sphere of recovery.
Broad recovery and niche recovery are really different and can be somewhat delinked. It didnt look that way a year ago, perhaps based on strong negative sentiment, but appears to be happening now.