While the number of people living in San Francisco with a paycheck typically ticks up in both October and November, driven by seasonal hiring for the holidays, net employment actually dropped for the second month in a row last month, decreasing by 3,700 to 560,700 in November, with 2,900 people having atypically left the local labor force and the unemployment rate inching up to 2.3 percent. And while there are 20,400 more employed residents in San Francisco than there were at the same time last year and 82,000 more employed than there were in April of 2020, when the pandemic-driven unemployment rate peaked at 13.0 percent, there are still 10,000 fewer employed residents in the city than there were prior to the pandemic and 10,000 fewer people in the labor force (573,900).
Following suit, the number of East Bay residents with a paycheck inched down by 9,300 in November to 1,526,700, representing 53,300 more employed residents than at the same time last year and 223,000 more employed than in April of 2020 but 32,800 fewer employed residents than prior to the pandemic having hit with 29,600 fewer people in the labor force.
Employment dropped by 2,900 in San Mateo County last month with a drop of 6,900 in Santa Clara County, for a net decline of 9,100 employed people in Silicon Valley last month and 3,200 fewer employed residents than there were prior to the pandemic, but 48,500 more employed people (1,474,900) than there were at the same time last year, with an unemployment rate of 2.3 percent.
Employment across Marin, Napa and Sonoma counties dropped by 5,800 last month to 431,300, representing 3,500 more employed residents spread across the northern counties than there were at the same time last year, and 64,300 more employed residents than in April of 2020, but 22,400 fewer employed residents than there were prior to the pandemic with 22,700 fewer people in the combined labor force (443,700) with an unemployment rate of 2.8 percent.
And as such, the total number of Bay Area residents with a job dropped by 27,900 in November to 3,993,600, with 101,300 more Bay Area residents employed than there were at the same time last year and 582,000 more employed residents since the second quarter of 2020, and an unemployment rate of 2.8 percent, but with over 68,000 fewer employed residents than there were prior to the pandemic having hit, 67,000 fewer people in the labor force, and the two metrics atypically trending down.
