{"id":190023,"date":"2026-02-23T14:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T14:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/190023\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T14:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T14:49:09","slug":"oaklands-recovery-in-11-simple-charts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/190023\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland\u2019s recovery in 11 simple charts\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

With its exceptional food scene (opens in new tab)<\/a> and cultural cachet (opens in new tab)<\/a>, Oakland is San Francisco\u2019s cooler (and warmer) counterpart across the bay. The Town has scored some wins lately: It\u2019s celebrating hometown hero<\/a> Alysa Liu\u2019s Olympic gold, its arts venue on Lake Merritt reopened after decades (opens in new tab)<\/a>, and a massive housing development (opens in new tab)<\/a> is set to break ground next to West Oakland BART.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet: Oakland has spent years mired in fiscal crisis (opens in new tab)<\/a>, culminating in the approval of last year\u2019s \u201cNobody\u2019s Happy Budget.\u201d (opens in new tab)<\/a> A recent survey of residents (opens in new tab)<\/a> (with a notably small sample size) found that only 15% felt that the city was headed in the right direction.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s complicated, in other words. So in the spirit of our series tracking San Francisco\u2019s economic recovery<\/a>, 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Crime <\/p>\n

Oakland\u2019s reputation for crime has been a key part of its story. In 2023, the local chapter of the NAACP described a city \u201cin crisis\u201d<\/a> 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>. A recent analysis by a tech startup that aggregates data about cities found that Oakland\u2019s violent crime rate is seven times greater than the national average (opens in new tab)<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That reputation can affect tourism, resident satisfaction, and the likelihood of corporations or retailers making the city their home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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)<\/a>as proof that law enforcement and violence-prevention efforts (opens in new tab)<\/a> are having an impact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, leaders acknowledged that underreporting remains an issue (opens in new tab)<\/a> \u2014\u00a0Oakland\u2019s police chief has urged the public to report crimes (opens in new tab)<\/a> \u2014 which throws off the alignment between data and residents\u2019 lived experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s annual report: (opens in new tab)<\/a> Commercial burglaries decreased by 47%; car thefts dropped 39%; and carjackings decreased by 49%.<\/p>\n

Commercial real estate <\/p>\n

Oakland\u2019s business district still feels like a ghost town, with sky-high office vacancy rates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re dealing with historical highs, and we\u2019re still trying to get our feet under ourselves,\u201d 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\u2019t make much of an impact, he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, the pace of new vacancies has slowed, according to Cushman & Wakefield researcher Wes Owens. \u201cIt feels like the big, scary move-outs are behind us. We think we\u2019re reaching the bottom.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

From here, the market will turn a corner, Jones said, especially as San Francisco\u2019s sky-high housing prices<\/a> 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\u2019s how it has happened in the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our take: Experts hope that the market has reached rock bottom, but it will take a few more quarters to see if they\u2019re right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Retail<\/p>\n

The number of empty storefronts in downtown Oakland is closely linked to office vacancies, according to Cameron Baird of Kidder Mathews.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAll those retailers and restaurants lean on office occupancy to make their business work,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I think that a lot of people are waiting on the sidelines right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s office spillover. \u201cPeople are trying to capture that curve and say, \u2018Hey, landlord, give me a rippin\u2019 deal for a couple of years.\u2019 And [the businesses] hope they\u2019ll break even.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s overall vacancy rate. Retail space in Rockridge is 97% occupied.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are working from home in those neighborhoods \u2014\u00a0instead of leaving their office tower in downtown Oakland to grab a salad, they\u2019re going to their local cafe during the workday,\u201d Baird said.<\/p>\n

Our take: While downtown retail may take years to recover, certain commercial corridors paint a much brighter picture today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Residential real estate<\/p>\n

Compared to San Francisco\u2019s wild real estate frenzy<\/a> \u2014 with its\u00a0rental bidding wars<\/a> and escalating home prices<\/a> \u2014\u00a0the residential market in Oakland is much more affordable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in SF clocks in at $3,156; in Oakland, it\u2019s $1,842, according to Apartment List. (The site\u2019s inventory focuses on newer, professionally managed buildings in dense neighborhoods, so the numbers largely relate to both cities\u2019 downtowns.)<\/p>\n

The divergence comes down to demand and vacancy rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOakland built a large volume of downtown apartments throughout the 2010s,\u201d said Rob Warnock, economic researcher at Apartment List. After demand \u201cevaporated\u201d during the pandemic, it is \u201ccrawling back, but not fast enough for property managers to raise rents quickly.\u201d As a result, one-bedroom rents in Oakland are rising by about 2% a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SF, meanwhile, has experienced a much greater swell in demand, partially because of the AI gold rush<\/a>, when supply was already tight. \u201cWithout a large backlog of available units to absorb this demand, prices have skyrocketed, and one-bedrooms are up more than 13% year-over-year,\u201d Warnock said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our take: Oakland is still much more affordable than San Francisco. It\u2019s better to be a buyer or a renter rather than a seller right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The economy <\/p>\n

The preliminary unemployment rate in the Oakland-Fremont-Berkeley metropolitan district in December was 4.4%, unchanged from 2024. That\u2019s lower than California\u2019s overall 5.1% unemployment rate but slightly higher than the nation\u2019s 4.1%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unemployment in the area has significantly decreased since the early 2010s but is still up from its 2022 nadir.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s total number of employers increased in 2025, which could lead to more jobs this year.<\/p>\n

Our take: The verdict is still out on how Oakland\u2019s economy will fare this year. Unemployment numbers don\u2019t offer a strong signal, though the increase in employers is a bright spot. Generally, the national labor market is uninspiring:\u00a0U.S. employers added fewer than 200,000 jobs last year, (opens in new tab)<\/a> versus 1.46 million in 2024.<\/p>\n

Port trafficTourism<\/p>\n

The Visit Oakland tourism association won\u2019t release its 2025 annual report until May, but its 2024 tally (opens in new tab)<\/a> shows a 0.2% decline in the total number of visitors, driven by a dip in overnight domestic travelers.<\/p>\n

That reduction, in turn, translated to a decrease in lodging demand, which contributed to the city\u2019s 5.5% drop in overall visitor spending.<\/p>\n

More recently, Oakland airport has seen some of the steepest declines in traffic<\/a> 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.\u00a0 (opens in new tab)<\/a><\/p>\n

The airport\u2019s own data shows that its total number of passengers declined 15% between 2024 and 2025 (opens in new tab)<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Visit Oakland has been working to \u201cshare the appeal and value\u201d of the city, according to president and CEO Peter Gamez, given that tourism is essential to its economic recovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOakland is a beautiful destination with a bright future,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are shifting any negative perception and proving that Oakland is an incredible place to be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With its exceptional food scene (opens in new tab) and cultural cachet (opens in new tab), Oakland is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[32135,3010,723,8520,143,145,144,6827,388,11853,1969,3429,5277],"class_list":{"0":"post-190023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-boom-loop","9":"tag-commercial-real-estate","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-downtown-oakland","12":"tag-oakland","13":"tag-oakland-headlines","14":"tag-oakland-news","15":"tag-port-of-oakland","16":"tag-real-estate","17":"tag-residential-real-estate","18":"tag-retail","19":"tag-tariffs","20":"tag-tourism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}