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Most San Francisco city employees reside outside the city. It has long been thought that San Francisco's notoriously high cost of living was responsible for driving workers to live far afield, but an analysis of city payroll and employee-residency data by The Bay Citizen shows that the highest-paid city employees, on average, are the ones fleeing the city each night. They take with them billions of dollars of economic activity.
On average, San Francisco city employees are paid more than the other residents of of every county in which they reside — in some cases, far more. For example, the San Francisco city workers living in Placer County brought home an average of $127,164 in 2009 — nearly three times the county's average per capita income.
A few large cities in the U.S. do require or have required employee residency. Additionally, commuter-payroll taxes, which tax non-residents who work in a city, wax and wane in popularity. Washington D.C.'s city council currently has a proposal to impose a tax only on the 70 percent of D.C. city employees who live outside the District. In California, the state Constitution prevents local governments from requiring residency, though employees may be required to live within a "reasonable distance."
Click on any county or city below to see how many San Francisco city employees live there and what they earn, on average. You can also browse individual departments and job titles. Scroll down to the FAQ to read about our methodology.
Quick Fact: 97 San Francisco city employees live in Napa County. They earn, on average, $92,660.21.
Residency, compensation and pension data for San Francisco city employees in 2009.
| Total # of San Francisco city employees | 22,657 |
| Percent not living in San Francisco | 57.86% |
| Average compensation | $87,735 |
| Total compensation payout in 2009 | $1,987,819,980 |
| Percent paid to non-San Francisco residents | 60.07% |
| Total # of pensioners | 23,179 |
| Average pension | $32,022 |
| Pension payout in 2009 | $742,245,171.52 |
| Percent paid to non-city residents | 50.62% |
| View all Cities | |
Data from 2009
| Department name | Fire |
| Total number of employees | 1183 |
| Average compensation | $133,497 |
| Percent of Fire employees who live outside of San Francisco | 62.47% |
| View all Departments | |
All statistics are for San Francisco Employees.
| Highest Paid Job Title | Battalion Chief, (Fire Department) |
| Total number of employees with this title | 31 |
| Average Compensation | $216,760 |
| Percent of employees with this title who live outside of San Francisco | 77.42% |
| View all Jobs | |
| County | Total Employees | Average Total Pay | Total Pensions | Average Pension |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alameda | 2,593 | $87,117.98 | 1,308 | $27,556.84 |
| Contra Costa | 2,798 | $89,788.70 | 1,915 | $34,127.77 |
| Marin | 758 | $112,009.52 | 1,353 | $45,866.26 |
| Napa | 97 | $92,660.21 | 126 | $31,993.42 |
| San Francisco | 9,547 | $83,142.66 | 7,911 | $29,386.15 |
| San Mateo | 5,274 | $89,155.30 | 3,621 | $35,068.70 |
| Santa Clara | 253 | $92,827.85 | 293 | $25,548.94 |
| Solano | 914 | $86,906.51 | 742 | $30,257.62 |
| Sonoma | 423 | $118,007.13 | 1,225 | $41,870.33 |
The Bay Citizen submitted Sunshine Ordinance requests to the city Department of Human Resources and the Office of the Controller, asking for a correlation of public employees' total compensation and home zip code.
The Controller’s Office provided a list of names, titles, departments and total compensation for all employees of the city and county of San Francisco, and the DHR sent a database of employees’ home zip codes. Both were for the calendar year 2009, although the DHR’s zip code records are not real-time, since it is up to an employee to inform the city if he or she has moved. The city said it had no way to correlate the two documents.
The Bay Citizen used the following process to correlate the data:
The payroll file contained nearly 33,000 names. Nearly 1,500 of these reflected duplications (caused by either a single person drawing two salaries or, possibly, separate individuals with the same name). These entries were deleted from the sample. Additionally, nearly 9,700 names from the payroll list did not appear in the DHR's zip code database and were dropped from the sample. We further limited the sample to employees residing in the nine Bay Area counties. Finally, the city did not limit the payroll list to full-time workers — hundreds made less than $1,000. In an effort to capture full-time employees, The Bay Citizen restricted the sample to workers paid more than $20,000 in 2009.
The final sample used in The Bay Citizen’s calculations for this data application contained 22,657 city and county employees.
The Bay Citizen submitted a Sunshine Ordinance request to the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System, asking for the annual payout amount and home zip codes for all the retirement fund’s beneficiaries. These payments are generated from the SFERS fund, not from the city’s general fund, though the city pays money from the General Fund to SFERs each year. This fiscal year the contribution from the City's General Fund will be $173 million, and next year it is forecast to be between $225 million and $273 million.
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
