Bad news for anyone who aspires to become a one-percenter in California: The bar to entry is among the highest in the nation. According to anew report from the Economic Policy Institute, to join the Golden State’s clubhouse of top earners you have to make $438,000 per year, putting California seventh among the country’s most exclusive states.
This isn’t a shocker here in San Francisco where, according to Mayor Lee, the middle class makes a whopping $80,000 to $150,000 (no matter that the Census Bureau puts the city’s median income at $73,000, meaning most of us are lower middle class or low-income).
While tech alone isn’t driving the booming economy, it’s certainly riding shotgun. As Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, told the Mercury Newsin November, “We are in a blowout, surging economy. A lot of it is being driven by companies with millions of customers, billions in sales and hundreds of millions or billions in profits. And the economic growth is spreading form the main tech centers to other parts of the Bay Area.”
Indeed, for the tenth year in a row the Bay Area has ranked first in high-paying tech jobs, with an average industry salary of $112,600 (up 3.7 percent over last year). And to sweeten the pot, last week the state released figures showing unemployment in San Francisco at 3.8 percent, the lowest figure in nearly a decade.
Still, not everything is coming up roses. The Examinernoted yesterday that 218,000 San Franciscans — or 28 percent of the city — live below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. These are the people Mayor Lee’s “shared prosperity” agenda aims to help, but with much of that prosperity concentrated and all but impossible to attain, it won't be shared so much as siphoned.
[via Vox; Forbes; Top photo via ThinkStock]
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