{"id":251037,"date":"2026-04-04T03:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T03:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/251037\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T03:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T03:32:11","slug":"s-fs-unemployment-rate-rises-amid-tech-layoffs-despite-ca-job-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/251037\/","title":{"rendered":"S.F\u2019s unemployment rate rises amid tech layoffs, despite CA job growth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"San<\/p>\n

San Francisco\u2019s unemployment rate rose, making it more difficult to find jobs. Some may be searching for work at job fairs, such as this\u00a0San Francisco City Job Fair at the county fair building in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Danielle Echeverria\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n

San Francisco\u2019s unemployment rate rose to 4.1% in January as tech layoffs continued, in contrast to California and national job gains,\u00a0according to state data released Friday.<\/a><\/p>\n

The city\u2019s unemployment rate was up from 3.8% in December. In contrast, California\u2019s unemployment rate dropped to 5.4% in January from 5.5% in the prior month, with employers adding 93,500 non-farm jobs.<\/p>\n

The tech industry showed continued weakness in January, with the San Francisco metropolitan area\u2019s information sector shedding 1,800 jobs. The area includes San Mateo County.<\/p>\n

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California\u2019s information sector also lost 1,400 jobs in January, while private education and health care continued to lead the state<\/a> in job growth, with 31,800 positions added.<\/p>\n

Numerous tech companies have cut jobs in the Bay Area this year, including Meta,<\/a> Oracle<\/a> and Atlassian.<\/a> Artificial intelligence companies have yet to add enough jobs to offset those cuts, despite startups attracting billions of dollars in funding<\/a> and leasing massive new offices.<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cIt remains very, very difficult to find any decently paid white collar job in the Bay Area,\u201d said Michael Bernick, special counsel at Duane Morris LP and former head of the California Employment Development Department.<\/p>\n

Other parts of the Bay Area also saw unemployment rates jump: Santa Clara County\u2019s rate rose to 4.2%, Alameda County\u2019s rate was up to 4.6% and Contra Costa County\u2019s rate jumped to 4.8%.<\/p>\n

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Separately, nationwide job figures showed 178,000 jobs added in March, according to the Labor Department, beating analyst expectations. Those gains included 91,000 jobs in education and health care, including 31,000 Kaiser Permanente workers who ended a strike last month<\/a> in California and Hawaii.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a lot of predictions out there that the job market would collapse,\u201d in the wake of tariffs and declining consumer sentiment, Bernick said. \u201cIt slowed down but it didn’t collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n

But California\u2019s share of job growth has been weakening, and its unemployment rate of 5.4% in January was the highest in the country, Bernick noted. Nevada was at 5.3% and New Jersey and Oregon were at 5.2% unemployment rate.<\/p>\n

The San Francisco metropolitan area lost 12,200 jobs between December and January. But some losses, such as in retail, were seasonal and attributed to the holiday shopping season ending. The data isn\u2019t seasonally adjusted.<\/p>\n

Bernick said that the January job figure is three months old, so a clearer picture of the local job market should come when the state releases February data in two weeks.<\/p>\n

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But his sense is that it\u2019s getting more and more difficult to land a position in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe picture there is of a very competitive, difficult, brutal even white collar market,\u201d he said. When talking to job seekers who are struggling to land even interviews, he tells them: \u201cIt\u2019s not you, it\u2019s the job market.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco\u2019s unemployment rate rose, making it more difficult to find jobs. Some may be searching for work…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[7,383,101,103,102,104,106,105,995],"class_list":{"0":"post-251037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-san-francisco","11":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","12":"tag-san-francisco-news","13":"tag-sf","14":"tag-sf-headlines","15":"tag-sf-news","16":"tag-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251037","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=251037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}