Bay Area Median Income Reaches New Highs, But Still Leaves Out Minorities
Even with a six-figure salary, you might be priced out of the Bay Area.
According to statistics released by the Census Bureau Thursday, Sept. 14, the median income in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metro area surged 9% from 2015 to $96,677 in 2016. The Bay Area now out earns the Washington, D.C., metro area, which held the top spot among the country's 25 largest metro areas in the previous year.
But the wealth is disproportionately skewed toward white and Asian households. While white households increased their median income in the area by 8% and Asian households by 5%, black households in the area only notched a 2% increase. Hispanic and Latino household income grew by 13%, but remains well below the six-figure salaries white and Asian households maintain at about $70,000 per year in 2015.
In the San Francisco metro area, where Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM) - Get Report , Facebook Inc. (FB) - Get Report and Oracle Corp. (ORCL) - Get Report employ many workers, median income was $96,677 in 2016, up from $88,518 a year earlier. If the metro area included Santa Clara county - where Apple Inc. (AAPL) - Get Report and Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) - Get Report are headquartered -- median income for the area would rise to $110,040.
To add a little perspective, the national median income for 2016 was $59,039, and that was a 3% increase over the year before.
Facebook said in August that about 3% of its workforce is black and 5% Hispanic, both of which were up 1% from the year before. But even as minority groups' incomes rise, they're not keeping pace with the technical workers' rapidly growing salaries. Facebook said African Americans hold 1% of technical roles at the company.
To compound diverging incomes, housing prices in the Bay Area are on the rise, as well. The median cost of a home there in July was $758,000, which was a 9.1% increase from a year earlier. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, there are parts of the Bay Area where a six-figure salary qualifies as "low income" based on home prices.
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