San Francisco, CA
SF government size has outpaced city’s population for decades
It’s a perennial complaint: San Francisco’s government is just too damn big.
Salaries and employee benefits account for the largest chunk of city spending: 43% of the current budget. A recent analysis found that San Francisco has the most public employees in core functions of any U.S. metropolis, even after detangling its unusual status as both a city and county.
Our workforce wasn’t always such a behemoth. The Standard analyzed City Hall’s growth over the past 20 years, revealing that it has far outpaced San Francisco’s population.
In 2005, the city employed 26,900 people, according to the Department of Human Resources. Twenty years later, it had 34,800, a 29% increase. During that time, the city’s population grew by 8%, from 780,000 in 2005 to 842,000 in 2025, according to the California Department of Finance.