Selected Market Indicators

Selected Economic & Demographic Snapshots
This next chart graphs unemployment rates from 1990 through January 2019. By April 2019, they had typically fallen another half percentage point.

Bay Area housing affordability – the percentage of county households that could afford to buy a median priced house with a 20% down-payment – ticked up in Q1 2019 due to the significant drop in interest rates, and in Santa Clara County, a year-over-year decline in median house sales price. But affordability is still very, very low compared to state and national standards.

In the Bay Area, the counties most affected by the high-tech hiring boom – San Francisco, Alameda, Santa Clara & San Mateo – have the highest percentages of population in the 25-34 age group, i.e. of millennials.
Of Bay Area counties, Santa Clara has the lowest percentage of 1-person households, and the highest percentage of households with 4 or more residents.