The share of Bay Area jobs that are high-wage has increased by 1.9 percentage points from 40.0% in 2001 to 41.9% in 2025
The share of Bay Area jobs that are middle-wage has declined by 3.3 percentage points from 22.5% in 2001 to 19.2% in 2025
The share of Bay Area jobs that are low-wage has increased by 1.3 percentage points from 37.5% in 2001 to 38.9% in 2025
Introduction
What portion of jobs are low-, middle- and high-wage?
Strong economic growth has expanded Bay Area employment opportunities in recent years. But not everyone in the region's workforce of over 4.0 million people has equal access to these opportunities. Monitoring employment in low-, middle- and high-wage occupations over time helps reveal the types of jobs that are being created or lost. Adding jobs in middle-wage occupations is crucial to increasing economic opportunity for the region's low-wage workers.
Regional Performance
The Bay Area's workforce has become more skewed towards high- or low-wage jobs over the years.
In 2025, jobs in middle-wage occupations represented 19.2% of our region's employment, declining in job share between 2001 and 2025. Diminishing middle-wage employment has meant increased job polarization, leaving low-wage workers with fewer options for upward mobility. Many of the middle-wage jobs lost between 2001 and 2025 have been in office and administrative support occupations.
While about four in five Bay Area jobs are either high- or low-wage, middle-wage jobs have ticked up since 2023, in both number and share. Between 2024 and 2025, the region lost roughly 16,000 low-wage jobs and 17,000 high-wage jobs, while adding roughly 6,000 middle-wage jobs. Even so, middle-wage jobs remain a relatively small share of regional employment.
Middle-wage jobs made up just 19.2% of regional employment in 2025
High-wage jobs made up 42% of regional employment in 2025
Local Focus
High-wage jobs have been increasingly concentrated in Silicon Valley and San Francisco.
The change in jobs across wage levels has not been evenly spread across the Bay Area. A disproportionate share of high-wage jobs (primarily in tech) was created in Silicon Valley and in San Francisco, the centers of recent economic growth. Conversely, in the North and East Bay, the share of high-wage jobs has been declining, while low-wage jobs have been increasing in share between 2001 and 2025. These jobs have primarily been in healthcare support and food service occupations.
Across all Bay Area subregions, the share of middle-wage jobs has been declining between 2001 and 2025, with the greatest declines seen in the West and South Bay, which in 2025 had the lowest shares of middle-wage jobs in the region. Office and administrative support occupations saw the largest decline in middle-wage job share between 2001 and 2025 in these subregions.
High-wage occupations accounted for 47% of the jobs in the West Bay in 2025, up six percentage points from 2001
Low-wage occupations accounted for 54% of the jobs in the North Bay in 2025, up 4.7 percentage points from 2001
Sources & Methodology
Occupational employment and wage information comes from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program. Regional and subregional data is published by the California Employment Development Department. The OEWS program collects data on wage and salary workers in nonfarm establishments to produce employment and wage estimates for some 800 occupations. Data from non-incorporated self-employed persons are not collected, and are not included in these estimates.
OEWS employment estimates lag by one year, where OEWS 2002 data reports 2001 employment data and 2001 wages with the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment Cost Index applied for 2002 costs. The data is reported at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) level, and includes annual employment and wage estimates for the following:\
- 23 major employment categories, where the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code ends in 0000 \
- Zero minor employment categories (SOC code ending in 000 but not 0000) \
- 23 broad occupations (ending in 0 but not 00), but only for some MSAs in some years \
- Many detailed occupations (not ending in 0)
The Vital Signs team confirmed that jobs are not double counted across these hierarchical categories. If a given MSA/year combination included data on a broad occupation, the source data did not include data on that broad occupation's detailed occupations.
Jobs are determined to be low-, middle- or high-wage based on the regional median hourly wage in the most recent year. Low-wage jobs are those that pay below 80% of the regional median wage. Middle-wage jobs are those that pay between 80% and 120% of the regional median wage. High-wage jobs are those that pay above 120% of the regional median wage. In 2025 in the Bay Area, low-wage occupations had a median hourly wage of less than $28.15, while high-wage occupations had a median hourly wage above $42.23. These categories were based on a calculated regional median hourly wage of $35.19.
Regional median hourly wages were computed assuming a log-normal wage distribution for the region’s employees, and headcounts are assigned per sector into low, middle and high wage categories based on the annual regional median. The detailed methodology was as follows:\
- Missing data for wage quartiles were imputed using assumptions of wage quantile distribution (Q2 = 1.5x Q1, Q3 = 1.5x Q2) and parent employment category wages.\
- Employment parent categories were filtered out for all subsequent calculations.\
- An annual regional median wage was calculated from all subregional data assuming log-normal wage distribution, and employment wage categories were calculated against the annual regional median wage\
- Per employment category, employment estimates were then assigned to each wage level based on wage quartiles and the yearly regional median wage for all occupations, assuming a log-normal distribution for wages.
Due to changes in reporting during the analysis period, subregional data from the OEWS have been aggregated to create geographies that allow for consistent comparison over time. One example is the definition of the “West Bay.” Although this term is not widely recognized in the San Francisco Bay Area, historical U.S. Census Bureau classifications have grouped San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties into a single metropolitan statistical area. Subregions are defined as follows:
- North Bay:\
- Santa Rosa PMSA (2001-2004)\
- Vallejo-Fairfield-Napa PMSA (2001-2004)\
- Napa MSA (2005-2025)\
- Santa Rosa-Petaluma MSA (2005-2014, 2024-2025)\
- Santa Rosa MSA (2015-2023)\
- Vallejo-Fairfield MSA (2005-2025)\
- East Bay:\
- Oakland PMSA (2001-2004)\
- Oakland-Fremont-Hayward MSA (2005-2014)\
- Oakland-Hayward-Berkeley MSA (2015-2023)\
- Oakland-Fremont-Berkeley MSA (2024-2025)\
- South Bay:\
- San Jose PMSA (2001-2004)\
- San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara MSA (2005-2025)\
- West Bay:\
- San Francisco PMSA (2001-2004)\
- San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City (2005-2014, 2024-2025)\
- San Francisco-Redwood City-South San Francisco (2015-2023)\
- San Rafael MD (2015-2025)