A Most Interesting Comparison: downtown Oakland vs Downtown San Francisco

SFGATE had an interesting comparison of the retail activity in Downtown Oakland as compared with Downtown San Francisco. Oakland wins hands-down with packed restaurants, crowds of people heading to clubs and concert venues, versus San Francisco’s downtown which is a ghost town. Oakland’s unemployment rate is 3.4%  at the end of 2022, ‘down from 15% at the start of the pandemic.’  Oakland has an office vacancy rate of around 18% while San Francisco’s is closer to 28%, but the big difference is a greater percentage of Oakland employees are coming back to work while the majority of San Francisco’s employees are still working from home. Less tech in Oakland means more bodies eating out for lunch downtown versus eating at home in their pj’s.