San Francisco Compensation Benchmarks 2026
San Francisco does not pay one premium. Across 107 major occupations it runs +32.0% against national medians on average, but that average hides a spread of 54.2 points between the best-paid and worst-paid occupation groups in this metro.
Which means the shortcut most pay structures rely on, a single San Francisco geographic adjustment factor, is wrong in both directions at once: it underpays the roles this market values and overpays relative to market on the roles it does not.
Computed from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA (CBSA 41860). 642 occupations carry metro-level data; 107 have San Francisco employment above 5,000 and are used here. Free to read, free to use, no account required.
San Francisco pay by occupation group
Median wage vs national · employment-weighted within group
→ Healthcare Practitioners at +62.3% and Healthcare Support at +8.1%. Same metro, same month, 54.2 points apart.
Where San Francisco pays more
Largest premium vs national median
Where San Francisco pays less
Largest discount vs national median
The ten roles San Francisco employs most
Metro median vs national median · annualised at 2,080 hours
| Role | San Francisco | National | Gap | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home Health and Personal Care Aides | $35,942 | $35,797 | +0.4% | 119K |
| Software Developers | $186,638 | $135,990 | +37.2% | 69K |
| General and Operations Managers | $149,989 | $105,768 | +41.8% | 44K |
| Registered Nurses | $186,597 | $97,552 | +91.3% | 42K |
| Retail Salespersons | $43,846 | $35,422 | +23.8% | 39K |
| Cashiers | $41,267 | $32,885 | +25.5% | 38K |
| Office Clerks, General | $52,000 | $45,011 | +15.5% | 38K |
| Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand | $48,402 | $40,248 | +20.3% | 31K |
| Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel | $96,949 | $69,992 | +38.5% | 30K |
| Janitors and Cleaners, Except Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners | $44,179 | $36,837 | +19.9% | 30K |
What named San Francisco employers file for the same job
US Department of Labor H-1B filings · FY2026 Q3 (decisions 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Jun 2026) · 25,031 certified San Francisco filings from 4,964 employers
Market data tells you the range; it never tells you who pays what. Employer wage filings do. Taking one role, Software Developers, and only employers with 12+ San Francisco filings in it, the same job in the same metro is filed anywhere from the 15th to the 87th percentile of the market range on this page:
| Employer | Filings | Median filed | vs San Francisco market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credit Karma, LLC | 20 | $262,881 | P87 |
| Reddit, Inc. | 14 | $255,617 | P85 |
| OpenAI OpCo, LLC | 57 | $255,000 | P85 |
| Roblox Corporation | 122 | $243,290 | P82 |
| People Center, Inc. d/b/a Rippling | 26 | $237,375 | P80 |
| Ernst & Young U.S. LLP | 17 | $236,252 | P80 |
| Veeva Systems Inc. | 24 | $138,750 | P15 |
| Nisum Technologies Inc. | 27 | $146,219 | P18 |
| WAL-MART ASSOCIATES, INC. | 12 | $146,540 | P18 |
→ 72 percentile points between named employers, inside one role, inside one metro. A candidate moving between two of these companies is not moving within a band; they are changing markets.
Median filed by role · where it sits on the San Francisco OEWS curve
What this data is, and is not. These are base salaries stated on Labor Condition Applications for visa-sponsored roles, floored by prevailing-wage rules: offered pay on a legal form, not a payroll extract, and base only, no bonus or equity. It shows how an employer positions pay for a role. Source: US Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification disclosure files, FY2026 Q3 (decisions 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Jun 2026). Employers keyed on federal tax ID; role medians computed only where an employer has 12 or more San Francisco filings in that occupation. Metro membership is by worksite county in the OMB delineation BLS uses for this metro.
Method, and one exclusion worth naming
Each San Francisco occupation is compared to its own national median from the same BLS survey vintage, so the comparison holds the job constant. Group figures are employment-weighted, meaning a group is driven by the roles San Francisco actually employs rather than by an unweighted average across job titles.
Tipped occupations are excluded. BLS reports cash wages for tipped roles, and most of the variation between metros comes from state tip-credit law rather than local pay levels. California requires the full state minimum wage before tips, so tipped roles here would show a premium against the national median that is a legal difference, not a market one. Waiters, bartenders and similar roles are left out for that reason.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA (CBSA 41860). Employer-reported wages from approximately 1.1 million surveyed establishments. Analysis by CompSignal; the underlying figures are BLS, the comparison and commentary are ours.
Run this on your own roles
Every tool below is free, needs no account, and uses the same BLS data as this analysis.
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