San Francisco: working there

Overview

REGION (the City and County of San Francisco) Official statistics Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year (via Census Reporter) · BEA GDP by county 2024 · BLS QCEW 2024 · BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics · Data: ACS 2020–2024; BEA 2024; QCEW 2024; BLS 2026M09

What is San Francisco, exactly?

San Francisco is a city and a county at the same time, so this guide covers the City and County of San Francisco. The Bay Area labour market is wider: many people who live in San Francisco work in Silicon Valley and the other way round (see the Silicon Valley guide). Metro-level statistics below cover the San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley metropolitan area, which also includes Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin and San Mateo counties.

The core counties had 830,235 residents in 2020–2024 (ACS) and 707,646 jobs on average in 2024 (BLS QCEW), with an average annual pay of $174,103 per job. Their combined GDP was about $268 billion in 2024 (BEA, current dollars), which is $323,188 per resident. The unemployment rate was 4.0% in 2026M09 (BLS, not seasonally adjusted).

We list 88 companies headquartered in the region that report headcount or revenue on their Wikipedia infobox. The largest by global headcount are Wells Fargo & Company (205,000), Salesforce, Inc. (83,334), The Gap, Inc. (82,000), Visa Inc. (34,100), Uber Technologies, Inc. (34,000). Headcount is worldwide, not the number of people working in the region.

How this page is organised

• Map and companies: where the headquarters are, sorted by employees and revenue.
• Jobs and pay: what the San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley metro area pays by occupation and which professions are concentrated here.
• Living: rent, home prices, commute and climate city by city.
• Getting there: visas, airports and transit, with official links.
• Data centers: facilities mapped by volunteers, with the limits of that source.

Official links: San Francisco

• Census Bureau data profile: San Francisco County
• California Employment Development Department: labor market information

These links go to official sources and open in a new window. The first one is the government's or company's own site as listed in Wikidata (property "official website"); check it before relying on it.

Map

The core counties and the cities where the listed companies have their headquarters.

Companies

COMPANY Compiled company-reported figures Source: Wikipedia infoboxes (CC BY-SA) · Data: year shown per company

Companies whose headquarters Wikipedia places in a city of this region, with the headcount and revenue printed in their infobox and the year of each figure. Employees are global; revenue is the company's own reported revenue. Subsidiaries of another company in the list and companies whose infobox headquarters is outside the region are left out to avoid double counting, so well-known brands that are owned by a larger group do not appear on their own. Click a column to sort.

By number of employees

By revenue (top 40)

By city

Private companies often publish neither figure, so absence from a ranking does not mean a company is small. Figures are not audited by us; check the company's own filings through the official site linked in the table.

Jobs and pay

METRO (San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley) Official statistics Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 · BLS Employment Projections 2025–35 · BEA Regional Price Parities · Data: OEWS May 2025; projections 2025–35; RPP 2024

The San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley metropolitan area has 2,373,920 jobs in the BLS wage survey (May 2025) and a median pay of $74,260 across all occupations, 46% above the national median ($74,260 against $50,980). The unemployment rate of the metro area was 4.4% (2026M09). The price level is 115.6 against 100 for the country (BEA Regional Price Parities).

There is no official count of open private-sector jobs in the region. Most are posted on employers' own careers pages (see the official websites in the company table). Federal vacancies in California: 1,707 postings →

Professions in demand: concentrated here and growing nationally

Occupations with at least 2,500 jobs in the metro area where the share of workers is at least 1.4 times the national share (location quotient), with the national growth outlook to 2035 and national openings a year. The first columns say where the region is strong; the last two say whether the occupation is growing.

Most jobs

Highest pay (at least 500 jobs)

OEWS pay above $239,200 a year is shown as "≥ $239,200" (BLS top code). It covers wages and salaries; stock grants and bonuses are not part of it, and for some employers they can be a large part of total compensation.

Living

CITY Official statistics and model estimate Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year (via Census Reporter) · NASA POWER climatology · Data: ACS 2020–2024; climatology 2001–2025

Across the 1 cities of the region with ACS data, median rent runs from $2,476 in San Francisco to $2,476 in San Francisco, with a middle value of $2,476 a month. The median home value is above the ACS reporting ceiling of $2,000,000 in several cities (shown as $2,000,001), so the real figure there is higher. Median household income runs from $140,970 to $140,970.

Where you live changes your commute more than your salary: use the shares of workers who drive alone, take transit, or work from home. The July temperature is the average of the month (°F). Click a city for its full guide.

Does the salary work? (estimate)

Official links: living in the region

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: Fair Market Rents
• California Franchise Tax Board: income tax rates

These links go to official sources and open in a new window. The first one is the government's or company's own site as listed in Wikidata (property "official website"); check it before relying on it.

Getting there

Work authorisation is federal. The main routes used by technology workers are the H-1B (specialty occupation, employer-sponsored, with an annual cap and a lottery for new petitions), L-1 (intracompany transfer), O-1 (extraordinary ability), TN (Canadian and Mexican professionals) and F-1 OPT/STEM OPT for graduates of US universities. Rules, fees and processing times change; always read the official pages before acting.

Official links: visas and work authorisation

• USCIS: working in the United States
• U.S. Department of State: employment visas
• U.S. Department of Labor: foreign labor certification
• USCIS: H-1B specialty occupations

These links go to official sources and open in a new window. The first one is the government's or company's own site as listed in Wikidata (property "official website"); check it before relying on it.

More on permits and first steps is in the country guide, and the page for your country is under Working in the US from your country.

Airports and transit

Air travel runs through San Francisco International (SFO), with Oakland (OAK) and San José (SJC) nearby. Public transport includes BART, San Francisco Muni (buses, light rail and cable cars), Caltrain to the peninsula and ferries across the bay. Routes and extensions change, so check the operators' own pages.

Official links: getting around

• San Francisco International Airport
• San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (Muni)
• BART
• Caltrain

These links go to official sources and open in a new window. The first one is the government's or company's own site as listed in Wikidata (property "official website"); check it before relying on it.

For daily commuting patterns, the table in the Living tab shows, city by city, how many workers drive alone, ride transit, work from home or travel 45 minutes or more.

Difficulties and tips

The difficulties, in numbers

• Housing cost. The median rent across the cities of the region is $2,476 a month, and the metro price level is 115.6 (US = 100).
• Long commutes. In the typical city of the region 21.6% of workers commute 45 minutes or more.
• Visa dependence. Among the cities of the region, the share of residents born abroad ranges from 34.0% to 34.0%, so many workers are on or have been through the visa routes above; sponsorship rules decide how fast you can change employer.
• Competition and pay structure. Pay is concentrated in a few occupations, and part of pay at some employers is bonus or stock, whose value changes. The OEWS tables above show wages only.

Practical tips (editorial, not official)

• Compare the whole package, not the salary: rent share, commute and taxes decide what you keep.
• Use the city table to trade commute against rent: living further away lowers rent but raises commute time.
• Check the company's own careers page and, for visas, the official USCIS pages; the dates and rules there override anything written here.
• Look at the occupations table: roles with a high location quotient have many employers competing for the same skills, which usually helps job seekers.
• Remote work is part of the picture here: the work-from-home column shows how many residents already do it.

Data centers

DATA CENTERS Crowd-sourced map data, not an official register Source: OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL): telecom=data_center and building=data_center · Data: queried 07/11/2026

Data centers in the region sit where fibre, power and customers meet. There is no official public register of data centers with size or capacity. The table below lists 4 facilities that volunteers have mapped in OpenStreetMap inside the region; it is a floor, not a complete count, and says nothing about megawatts or jobs.

By operator

Every mapped facility

Jobs in data centers (technicians, electricians, facilities engineers) appear in the occupation tables of the " + T["metro"] + " metro area, but BLS does not separate them. Capacity and employment per facility: planned, only when an official or company source exists.

FAQ

Sources

Sources

• BLS OEWS (wages and employment by occupation, May 2025)
• BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
• BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics
• BLS JOLTS
• BLS State and Metro Area Employment
• Census Bureau American Community Survey (via Census Reporter)
• BEA GDP by state and Regional Price Parities
• IRS 2026 tax adjustments
• U.S. Department of Labor, minimum wage by state
• Tax Foundation state income tax rates 2026
• USAJOBS
• USCIS
• U.S. Department of State, visas
• NASA POWER climatology
• GeoNames / Census Gazetteer (coordinates)