San Francisco Employment

While the unemployment rate in San Francisco has now held at 3.3 percent for four months in a row, the number of people living in the city with a job slipped by 300 in March to 535,200. And while it’s a nominal change, it’s the first March without a recorded increase in San Francisco employment since 2009.

There are now 69,700 more people living in San Francisco with paychecks than there were at the height of the dot-com peak in 2000, which is 12,600 higher over the past year and an increase of 98,500 since January of 2010, but 1,200 fewer versus at the end of last year.

At the same time, employment in Alameda County, which includes Oakland, dropped by 800 in March to 791,500 but remains 10,300 higher over the past year (versus 13,800 higher on a year-over-year basis the month before) and the unemployment rate held at 4.3 percent for the fourth month in a row while the unemployment rate for the greater East Bay ticked up from 4.3 to 4.4 percent.

Alameda County Employment

27 thoughts on “San Francisco and East Bay Employment Slip”
  1. The title of the article is quite misleading. It should say that employment remained stable (which is a less sexy headline, I know :). The 300 ‘lost’ jobs in SF represent a decline of 0.056%. What does it take in your opinion for employment to remain stable? No change at all down to the single digit?

    [Editor’s Note: As written above and apparently ignored, “while it’s a nominal change, it’s the first March without a recorded increase in San Francisco employment since 2009.”]

    1. Wait, what does ‘normal change’ mean? Do you mean ‘statistically insignificant’? If that’s the case, you should REALLY make sure your conclusion is that employment remained flat.

      1. Pero, there is a difference between “nominal” and “normal.”

        Also, it is noteworthy that employment has flatlined after a long period of increases. That shows the rate of increase has slowed and trending toward negative.

          1. Heh, people have been claiming that the crash is right around the corner for years now

          2. Heh Heh, just like people have been claiming that the gentrification of the Bayview is right around the corner for decades.

  2. “Funding for U.S. startups fell 25% from the fourth quarter to $13.9 billion, the largest quarterly decline on record since the dot-com bust, according to data from Dow Jones VentureSource. The numbers of deals also hit a four-year low of 884.

    The drop threatens to hasten a slump rippling through Silicon Valley that is pushing startups to slash marketing budgets, lay off staff and dial back lofty ambitions. Investors such as mutual funds and big banks that pumped money into startups on the promise of big returns have since retrenched, as a punishing market for initial public offerings has spoiled the runaway optimism.”

    [Editor’s Note: Or as we foreshadowed earlier this year: Venture Funding Plummets and a Local Near-Unicorn Is Quite Sick.]

  3. Funding down and valuations are falling as well:

    “T. Rowe Price Group Inc. marked down in the first quarter most of its investments in private technology companies, including Uber Technologies Inc. and Dropbox Inc., deepening Silicon Valley’s woes as mutual funds pull back on their startup bets.”

    Interesting times

  4. The unicorn space is rapidly heading towards that day of reckoning known as price discovery, and Facebook is the next Big Short, LOL. Along with Amazon, whose touted cloud service is used mostly by these same endangered unicorn companies. Maybe our housing problem was never really due to supply, like so many want to believe, but rather speculative demand. Venture capital destroyed San Francisco.

    1. As always, if you are so sure, you should short Facebook and Amazon. You’ll be able to buy all the buildings you want and you can use them to house whoever you want.

      But that only works if you are correct. Don’t do it if you’re wrong.

          1. The stock market is a casino, and the house always wins; shorts are very dangerous to time without insider information, the use of which, of course, is illegal (in keeping with the grand tradition of Wall St fraud).

      1. Mark Zuckerberg thinks that delivering Virtual Reality video over chat will somehow rekindle my interest in what that one dude that I knew in college is having for lunch today. Nope!

  5. Population of SF as of 2013: 857K
    Population of SF working: 535K
    Population of SF children in SFUSD: 56k
    Seniors in SF (est?) 100k

    Are the rest on welfare? Serious question.

    1. Not likely.

      I think there are a fair number of independently wealthy working age folks in SF who choose not to work.

      I live on Mt. Davidson. Hardly a “wealthy” neighborhood, yet I know of 3 people on my street who fit this category. I’d imagine there are many such who live in St. Francis Woods or Sea Cliff or Pacific Heights.

    2. yup, all those tens of thousands of sf children in private school, and babies and preschoolers, all of them are on welfare. slackers.

      if you were serious, you would lookup the counts of sf residents receiving various forms of public assistance. just as easy to lookup from public records as the stats you listed.

  6. Good question Jake, about Private Schools. According to Great Schools, there are 400 private schools. At most that would be 10k.

    I am looking up the statistics of SF people receiving welfare on the internet. I’m having a bit of an issue since currently I’m out of the country, and I’m on a rather older ipad doing this, would love you to help me look up welfare & it’s various forms in SF proper.

    Google outside of the USA & the various other search engines are quite hampered and censored.

    1. Are you forgetting about spouses that don’t work? I mean sure, that’s less common than the 50s, but my wife took five years off after the birth of our second child. It’s not that uncommon.

    2. FWIW, the only “welfare” stats I could find were just that in 2015 the amount of poverty in SF proper was 13.8%

  7. 4thGSF, you are off by nearly a factor of 2 on the sf private school enrollment. FWIW, 25-30% of SF residents are either younger than 18 or older than 65.

    The gov’t has many forms of assistance programs. Do you really care how many children get free meals or how many disabled veterans live in SF? See if you can dig up any stats on the Aid to Corporations with Dependent Politicians or how many sf property owners get the subsidies know as the mortgage interest deduction and prop 13. Wonder if the poverty rate would be higher or lower without those welfare programs.

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