Despite working for the San Francisco government, most city employees don’t actually live in the city.
Of the roughly 35,000 active employees in the city and county government, just 41% live within city limits. A majority, 55%, reside elsewhere in the Bay Area, and 4% live outside the nine counties.
The share living in San Francisco, however, has grown since before the pandemic. Between May 2019 to May 2025, the proportion of city employees living in the city rose from 36% to 41%. San Mateo has the next highest share at 19%, followed by Alameda and Contra Costa counties, each with about 15% of San Francisco city employees — largely unchanged since 2019.
{ “__type”: “devHubFreeformEmbed”, “__id”: “Datawrapper”, “__fallbackImage”: “https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/5tjMH/mobile.png”, “__data”: { “datawrapper_id”: “5tjMH” } }
What is driving the rise in government workers living in San Francisco?…