With its exceptional food scene (opens in new tab) and cultural cachet (opens in new tab), Oakland is San Francisco’s cooler (and warmer) counterpart across the bay. The Town has scored some wins lately: It’s celebrating hometown hero Alysa Liu’s Olympic gold, its arts venue on Lake Merritt reopened after decades (opens in new tab), and a massive housing development (opens in new tab) is set to break ground next to West Oakland BART.
And yet: Oakland has spent years mired in fiscal crisis (opens in new tab), culminating in the approval of last year’s “Nobody’s Happy Budget.” (opens in new tab) A recent survey of residents (opens in new tab) (with a notably small sample size) found that only 15% felt that the city was headed in the right direction.
It’s complicated, in other words. So in the spirit of our series tracking San Francisco’s economic recovery, The Standard checked a few basic metrics on the state of Oakland, post-pandemic. We dug into data on crime, real estate, tourism, and more, to get a sense of how the stats have shifted in the past five years and where The Town stands today.
Crime
Oakland’s reputation for crime has been a key part of its story. In 2023, the local chapter of the NAACP described a city “in crisis” due to its high rates of carjackings, robberies, and muggings. Last year, President Donald Trump made a show of describing Oakland as plagued by crime (opens in new tab). A recent analysis by a tech startup that aggregates data about cities found that Oakland’s violent crime rate is seven times greater than the national average (opens in new tab).
That reputation can affect tourism, resident satisfaction, and the likelihood of corporations or retailers making the city their home.
However, data from the Oakland Police Department shows that the city has seen a significant drop in both violent and property crime in recent years. Mayor Barbara Lee and other city leaders have touted the decline (opens in new tab)as proof that law enforcement and violence-prevention efforts (opens in new tab) are having an impact.
Still, leaders acknowledged that underreporting remains an issue (opens in new tab) — Oakland’s police chief has urged the public to report crimes (opens in new tab) — which throws off the alignment between data and residents’ lived experiences.
Perhaps the biggest win for Oakland last year was that incidents of violent crime (homicides, rape, and assault) decreased 25% from 2024. Other stats from the police department’s annual report: (opens in new tab) Commercial burglaries decreased by 47%; car thefts dropped 39%; and carjackings decreased by 49%.
Commercial real estate
Oakland’s business district still feels like a ghost town, with sky-high office vacancy rates.
“We’re dealing with historical highs, and we’re still trying to get our feet under ourselves,” said Grant Jones, a managing director at Cushman & Wakefield. Through last year, the amount of square footage tenants abandoned exceeded new leases coming onto the market, so even the wins didn’t make much of an impact, he added.
However, the pace of new vacancies has slowed, according to Cushman & Wakefield researcher Wes Owens. “It feels like the big, scary move-outs are behind us. We think we’re reaching the bottom.”
From here, the market will turn a corner, Jones said, especially as San Francisco’s sky-high housing prices push more people to Oakland. As that happens, companies may realize that more of their employees live in the East Bay, which could spur them to shift office space to Oakland. At least, that’s how it has happened in the past.
Our take: Experts hope that the market has reached rock bottom, but it will take a few more quarters to see if they’re right.
Retail
The number of empty storefronts in downtown Oakland is closely linked to office vacancies, according to Cameron Baird of Kidder Mathews.
“All those retailers and restaurants lean on office occupancy to make their business work,” he said. “So I think that a lot of people are waiting on the sidelines right now.”
The numbers are moving in the right direction, Baird said, pointing to vacancy rates dipping slightly between 2024 and 2025. He attributes that to plucky retailers betting that Oakland will benefit in the next few years from San Francisco’s office spillover. “People are trying to capture that curve and say, ‘Hey, landlord, give me a rippin’ deal for a couple of years.’ And [the businesses] hope they’ll break even.”
The state of affairs is much rosier outside of downtown. Commercial corridors in Temescal and Rockridge, for example, are crowded with cafes, restaurants, and retailers, driving down the city’s overall vacancy rate. Retail space in Rockridge is 97% occupied.
“People are working from home in those neighborhoods — instead of leaving their office tower in downtown Oakland to grab a salad, they’re going to their local cafe during the workday,” Baird said.
Our take: While downtown retail may take years to recover, certain commercial corridors paint a much brighter picture today.
Residential real estate
Compared to San Francisco’s wild real estate frenzy — with its rental bidding wars and escalating home prices — the residential market in Oakland is much more affordable.
The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in SF clocks in at $3,156; in Oakland, it’s $1,842, according to Apartment List. (The site’s inventory focuses on newer, professionally managed buildings in dense neighborhoods, so the numbers largely relate to both cities’ downtowns.)
The divergence comes down to demand and vacancy rates.
“Oakland built a large volume of downtown apartments throughout the 2010s,” said Rob Warnock, economic researcher at Apartment List. After demand “evaporated” during the pandemic, it is “crawling back, but not fast enough for property managers to raise rents quickly.” As a result, one-bedroom rents in Oakland are rising by about 2% a year.
SF, meanwhile, has experienced a much greater swell in demand, partially because of the AI gold rush, when supply was already tight. “Without a large backlog of available units to absorb this demand, prices have skyrocketed, and one-bedrooms are up more than 13% year-over-year,” Warnock said.
Our take: Oakland is still much more affordable than San Francisco. It’s better to be a buyer or a renter rather than a seller right now.
The economy
The preliminary unemployment rate in the Oakland-Fremont-Berkeley metropolitan district in December was 4.4%, unchanged from 2024. That’s lower than California’s overall 5.1% unemployment rate but slightly higher than the nation’s 4.1%.
Unemployment in the area has significantly decreased since the early 2010s but is still up from its 2022 nadir.
The city’s total number of employers increased in 2025, which could lead to more jobs this year.
Our take: The verdict is still out on how Oakland’s economy will fare this year. Unemployment numbers don’t offer a strong signal, though the increase in employers is a bright spot. Generally, the national labor market is uninspiring: U.S. employers added fewer than 200,000 jobs last year, (opens in new tab) versus 1.46 million in 2024.
Port trafficTourism
The Visit Oakland tourism association won’t release its 2025 annual report until May, but its 2024 tally (opens in new tab) shows a 0.2% decline in the total number of visitors, driven by a dip in overnight domestic travelers.
That reduction, in turn, translated to a decrease in lodging demand, which contributed to the city’s 5.5% drop in overall visitor spending.
More recently, Oakland airport has seen some of the steepest declines in traffic of any major U.S. airport. From September 2024 to September 2025, 17% fewer people passed through OAK for domestic flights than in the previous year, according to federal data. (opens in new tab)
The airport’s own data shows that its total number of passengers declined 15% between 2024 and 2025 (opens in new tab).
Meanwhile, Visit Oakland has been working to “share the appeal and value” of the city, according to president and CEO Peter Gamez, given that tourism is essential to its economic recovery.
“Oakland is a beautiful destination with a bright future,” he said. “We are shifting any negative perception and proving that Oakland is an incredible place to be.”