San Francisco Employment Reaches Record Highs In July
Once again living up to its nickname as "The City that Knows How," San Francisco added 6,000 new jobs in July. As revealed by California's Employment Development Department July unemployment report, San Francisco is home to 532,100 employed people, up .3 percent from June. According to SocketSite, that's the largest number of employed people to live in the City by the Bay in the past 15 years. With that kind of astounding growth in employment, it's probably safe to say San Francisco has recovered from the Great Recession.
The San Jose Mercury News credits San Francisco's job boom to a healthy tech sector, which accounted for 31 percent of all new jobs in the Bay Area. Stephen Levy, Director of the Palo Alto-situated Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, told a reporter with the paper, "You drive around Silicon Valley, and you see Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Facebook, a lot of other companies, hiring and adding office space." Dr. Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, added, "I just can't believe what is happening with the tech industry in the Bay Area." Although the UCLA-educated economist made his name correctly predicting the subprime mortgage market collapse of the late 2000s, he's optimistic about economic growth in the Silicon Valley. "It's so strong, you get tempted to call it a tech bubble."
While a resurgent tech sector is obviously playing a big part in San Francisco's increasingly robust job market, other industries are showing gains as well. As reported in Beacon Economics' Regional Outlook, San Francisco has seen a 4.2 percent growth in the hospitality and leisure field over the past year. Going forward, Beacon has predicted that the labor market in San Francisco will remain strong through the end of the decade and unemployment will hold steady at 3.4 to 3.5 percent. The notion that the S.F. job market will remain stable should be good news for prospective homeowners in San Francisco, as the median price for a single-family home has risen to $1,044,000.
Mario McKellop is a freelance writer who has covered the pop culture beat since 2010.