SJ plummets in Milken Institute's top cities ranking, due to wage and job losses

 

Bay Area metros rank low amongst top-performing large U.S. metros. Image by The Milken Institute.

 

San Jose's reputation for economic health took a big hit last week, as the widely-respected Milken Institute's index of Best Performing Cities had SJ going off a cliff: from a #44 ranking in 2024 to a #108 ranking in 2025. The SF Chronicle reports.

“The San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose metropolitan areas have all been affected by the slower growth in high-tech employment during 2022 and 2023,” Maggie Switek, senior director of research at the Milken Institute and and the lead author of the report, said in an email. 

“As a result, all three metro areas have experienced below national average growth in total employment since 2022,” she said. 

Slow job growth and sluggish increases in pay put further economic pressure on “a population that was already suffering from the low availability of affordable housing in these metros,” Switek added. “As people have struggled keeping up with the costs of living, some residents have decided to leave, with the three metro areas experiencing a net outflow of domestic migrants in recent years.”

Go Deeper:

  • Insight: CA's competitive edge suffocated by heavy-handed regulations and high living costs
  • SJ and SCC both earned “D” grades for fiscal health. Here's why—and how they can turn things around
  • School board candidate: I'm a CEO; here's how SJ/SF districts can fix their fiscal disasters

    • The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara region also saw a sharp drop, going from 44th place last year to 108th this year. The South Bay region, where numerous tech giants are headquartered, fared better when it comes to wage growth, coming in 67th during the 2018-2023 period. The area also came in 144th in housing affordability in 2023, the most recent year of data available.

    The Oakland-Hayward-Berkeley metro area saw its overall rank go from 112th last year to 131st this year, after coming in 61st in 2023. The region also saw stagnant wage growth in recent years, coming in 125th during the 2018-2023 period according to the report, and it too ranked near the bottom of the list for housing affordability among large metro areas.

    The drop points to pandemic era challenges that the region continues to struggle with. The top ranked large cities or regions in the 2025 report with at least 250,000 residents were Raleigh, N.C.; Ogden, Utah; Salt Lake City; Huntsville, Ala. and Colorado Springs.

    This diagram shows all the components of the Milken Institute index:

    Read the whole Chron story here.

    Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity

    Opp Now enthusiastically welcomes smart, thoughtful, fair-minded, well-written comments from our readers. But be advised: we have zero interest in posting rants, ad hominems, poorly-argued screeds, transparently partisan yack, or the hateful name-calling often seen on other local websites. So if you've got a great idea that will add to the conversation, please send it in. If you're trolling or shilling for a candidate or initiative, forget it.

    Jax OliverComment