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San Francisco, CA

San Francisco business statistics
Employer establishments with 1-49 employees
(2007)
115,196 78,289
Small business growth rate
(2004-2007)
3% 5.3%
State business tax climate ranking
(out of 50 states)
48 N/A
Percentage of population with bachelor's degree
(ages 25-34)
45.6% 32.7%
Violent crime
(rate per 100,000 inhabitants, 2007)
643.8 537.6
Property crime
(rate per 100,000 inhabitants, 2007)
3,743.9 3,700.0
Population growth
(2003-2008)
3% 6.38%
Per-capita income
(2007)
$60,983 $41,342
Per-capita income growth
(2002-2007)
32% 25.0%
GDP (in millions)
(2006)
$292,078 $164,601
GDP growth
(2001-2006)
27% 32%
Average hourly wage
(2008)
27.31 $21.03
Housing foreclosure rate
(first half of 2009)
52 113
Median rent
(2009, for a 2-bedroom housing unit)
$1,748 $981
Housing price-to-income (HPI) ratio
(first quarter of 2009)
3.0% 1.8%
Long-term HPI ratio
(20-year average, 1984-2004)
3.55% 1.85%
HPI deviation from long-term average
-8% 0.0%

All statistics are for the full Metropolitan Statistical Area. For a complete list of data sources, see "How we picked the Best Places."

From the November 2009 issue
Best Places Winners
MAPS

BORROW

Local smallbiz lenders

  • Wells Fargo & Company
  • Innovative Bank
  • U.S. Bank
  • Superior Financial Group
  • Heritage Commerce Corp
See all local lenders

What do you think of San Francisco?
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ireportTell us why: Low taxes? Talented workers? An active small business community? Send us your photos and videos, and you could be featured in our upcoming coverage of reader-picked Best Places to Launch. More
This year we partnered with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to find the 50 most business-friendly communities in America.

With help from Robert Fairlie, an economist and leading scholar of entrepreneurship at the University of California, Santa Cruz, we developed a methodology and sifted through such data on factors such as per capita income, hourly wages, workforce quality, crime rates, taxes and foreclosures. More

Comments? E-mail the editors
Data partners

This package was produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Foreclosure data provided by RealtyTrac.

Housing price-to-income data provided by Moody's Economy.com.