San Francisco's job market slows amid tech layoffs
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San Francisco's job market is shrinking faster than any other major U.S. city, while smaller metro areas are emerging as today's strongest job hubs, per new data from Indeed.
Why it matters: The labor market is slowing down, particularly for white-collar professionals in tech.
Zoom in: The number of job listings in San Francisco declined 37% from February 2020 to October, according to the job site's analysis.
- Santa Rosa, Napa and San Jose also saw significant declines.
- Smaller markets elsewhere, particularly those reliant on health care jobs, have remained more resilient.
Zoom in: The Bay Area's job market is in flux as major tech employers — including Google, Meta and Salesforce — have sharply slowed hiring and rolled out deep layoffs over the past two years, UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti said in a recent interview.
- Companies expanded too quickly before 2022 and then pulled back as interest rates spiked and headcounts proved too large, per Moretti.
Yes, but: The AI boom has been a catalyst for new jobs, particularly in San Francisco.
The intrigue: Small metro areas that saw gains had labor markets more weighted toward health care, leisure and hospitality.
- Those two sectors accounted for more than 100% of net job gains in 2025 so far.
Between the lines: The white-collar pullback is also partly due to the Trump administration's job cuts and the hiring freeze in place for much of the year.
The bottom line: The job market looks a lot like the real estate market; it's all about location, location, location.