Sources & References
Metro Job Market Pulse · San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA MSA · October 2026
Every advertised-pay, job-posting and industry figure in this briefing comes from WageScape's own database of active job postings. The sources below back the external facts cited in the written analysis.
Sources cited in this report
This Month's Takeaways
Bay Area is the only California region with net job loss since 2022
Bay Area Economics Institute / BLS — Regional employment trend analysis
Bay Area tech layoffs reached 14,501 through June 2026 via WARN filings
Joint Venture Silicon Valley — WARN filing tracker analysis
Local Economic Conditions
MSA unemployment rose to 4.6% in August from 4.4% in July
Federal Reserve Economic Data / BLS — Metro unemployment rate series
Real wages in SF metro down 7.8%, median hourly wage $37
Public Policy Institute of California — State wage and inflation analysis
Open Threads in the Data
Professional and business services lost 2,800 jobs July-August 2026
California Employment Development Department — State industry employment data
Government employment grew 11,200 jobs in September on back-to-school hiring
Bureau of Labor Statistics — National/regional government payroll data
How the numbers are calculated
- Advertised pay is the median of the pay ranges employers publish in active job postings in this metro. It is not survey or payroll data.
- Percent changes compare the latest six full months with the six months before that, for the same metro and sector.
- Sectors group postings by the employer's industry (NAICS) classification into ten sectors. Where a metro has too few postings in a sector, the state figure is used instead.
- Role pay trends use the same comparison windows. "Stable" means a change of less than 3%; "moderate" 3–10%; "significant" more than 10%.
Official data for comparison