After a strong year-end burst of job growth, January 2019 started with a big, loud boom. Not a good boom… a drop of 77,900 in Bay Area employment. February 2019 saw some recovery, but the picture is a bit muddy. (See 2019 stats here)

Total current (Feb-2019) Bay Area employment of 4,118,100 is 56,200 below the recent peak figure of 4,174,300. The labor force is 43,600 below the recent peak figure of 4,284,700. Job growth over the past three months was -54,400 versus 7,100 for the same period last year.

This is the worst year-end/year-beginning performance in a long time. The tech companies keep leasing space in San Francisco and on the Peninsula. Maybe we will see employment turn up sometime soon.