From SFGate
Thousands of new technology
industry and other professional jobs and a burst of new housing
construction attracted more new residents to San Francisco in 2007 than
in any year in nearly a decade and drove the city's population to a new
high of more than 824,000.
The 12,284 arrivals were drawn to an estimated 10,000 new jobs and
the city's enduring panache - good weather, views, arts and culture,
restaurants, and access to the outdoors.
[Check out our database: Population stats for California (2008)]
But San Francisco still has some of the highest housing prices
in the world and a long-standing housing shortage, so where will all
these people live?
At least some of them will occupy the 2,500 new homes added in 2007
- the most housing created in the city in at least 19 years - and in
the 3,281 units the city authorized for construction last year, the
tangible result of city government's efforts to make up for minimal
housing production in past decades.
Parts of the South Bay kept pace with San Francisco's job and
housing growth - with San Mateo County adding jobs and San Jose
constructing slightly more housing - but other neighboring counties
fell behind San Francisco in both categories, according to statistics
recently released by several state agencies.
Professional job market good
Workforce observers say that computer-systems designers and people
who perform other professional, scientific and technical services have
seen San Francisco as a good job market in recent years. Meanwhile,
technology companies such as Yahoo and Google have opened offices in
the city in part to accommodate employees and clients who don't want to
commute to Silicon Valley.
"San Francisco has had a lot going for it for a long time, but some
of those things matter more now than ever before," said Jed Kolko, a
California economy expert at the Public Policy Institute of California.
"There's a very educated and skilled workforce here, and it's a place
where a lot of people want to live."
Compared to much of the United States, San Francisco's economy is
not dependent on housing development and therefore was not hurt by a
loss of construction and other housing-related jobs that were lost
elsewhere as part of the mortgage crisis, Kolko said.
Some observers said the city's economy is tied to the success of the
technology industry more than ever before, and, for that reason, it is
affected less by national economic trends.
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