Jobless Tech Workers Are Being Left Out of San Francisco's AI Boom

San Francisco’s AI boom is creating enormous wealth and high-paying jobs, but many tech workers are being displaced rather than benefiting. More than 14,500 Bay Area tech workers received layoff notices in the year through June, nearly twice the prior year’s total, while demand for software engineers has fallen 42% since 2022. AI-focused IT and computer science jobs, by contrast, have grown 37%. The wider local economy has added jobs recently, mainly in health, education, and hospitality, but remains far below its pre-pandemic employment level. Rising rents, now increasing faster than anywhere else in the country, intensify the strain.

The shift is especially difficult for experienced workers whose skills have lost value and for young people trying to enter the field: employment among California workers aged 22 to 25 in occupations highly exposed to AI has dropped 16.8% since ChatGPT’s launch. Some employers are instead seeking “forward deployed engineers,” who combine coding with product and customer-facing business work; Bay Area postings for the role have surged nearly 600% since 2022, with a median advertised salary of $202,300. A laid-off developer now learning AI reflects both adaptation and uncertainty, while a community founded by former Google employee Basem Istanbouli offers hikes, networking, and interview practice to more than 1,700 unemployed workers. Its growth highlights fears that prolonged joblessness will push skilled people out of San Francisco or into financial hardship.