If Your'e Going to San Francisco...

San Francisco has long appealed to twentysomethings who want an urban lifestyle without the sprawl of Los Angeles, the cold of Chicago or the hectic competition of New York City. In the 1960s, aspiring hippies flocked to Haight Ashbury. Between 1995 and 2000, it was the second most popular metro area, after New York, for young, single, college-educated people to move to. But from 2000 to 2004, almost 60,000 twentysomethings left following the collapse of the dot-com bubble.

Are You Going to (Stay in) San Francisco?August 16, 2007

When Nick Colin and two of his friends were deciding where to live after they graduated from Bard College in 2004, they landed on San Francisco. It was the obvious choice, says Mr. Colin. None of them wanted to move back to their hometowns in Virginia, Ohio and Maine, and they weren't attracted to Manhattan's frenetic pace.

The three rented an apartment just south of San Francisco's Mission District, a popular destination for young adults attracted to the neighborhood's copious dive bars, cafes, restaurants and music venues.

"It's easy living," said Mr. Colin, speaking from his cellphone as he rode the bus home from work. "At a taqueria, you can get a gut-busting meal for under $5; the weather's not extreme, and I just sold my car because I'm trying to be more green."

But now, two of his roommates are planning to leave town, and Mr. Colin, who's 25, is considering it. "It's a little bit bleaker than we thought it would be as far as job prospects," he says.

THE CITY'S LIMITS

San Francisco has long appealed to twentysomethings who want an urban lifestyle without the sprawl of Los Angeles, the cold of Chicago or the hectic competition of New York City. In the 1960s, aspiring hippies flocked to Haight Ashbury. Between 1995 and 2000, it was the second most popular metro area, after New York, for young, single, college-educated people to move to. But from 2000 to 2004, almost 60,000 twentysomethings left following the collapse of the dot-com bubble.

In 2005, they started coming back. Drawn perhaps by the tech resurgence, 5,915 people aged 20-29 arrived in the city that year from another state, according to the U.S. Census.

But will they stay?

While jobs in management consulting and software engineering grew in San Francisco in 2005, 25% of those positions were filled by self-employed people working on a project basis, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These aren't the kinds of contracts that new grads with suitcases in tow and few connections are likely to nab.

Almost every job sector in San Francisco, from law to retail to insurance, has hardly grown at all, or shrunk in the past 15 years, according to data from the state of California. One of the few bright spots has been the hospitality sector, which added 4,000 jobs since 2004. Ted Egan, San Francisco's chief economist, says that nearly half of all 140,000 San Francisco jobs held by 22-34 year-olds are in either hospitality or financial and professional services.

The result: many college graduates wind up waiting tables or making lattes.
"So many of the people I know just work in restaurants and coffee shops who are brilliant people, and came here with the hopes that they could find meaningful work," says Mr. Colin's roommate Jean Klasovsky. The 25-year-old looked for a full-time position at a nonprofit for a year while working two part-time jobs, six days a week, at a bookstore and an after-school tutoring center. Now she works at a nonprofit management consultancy. But she says it's not a career that interests her, and wants to become an elementary school teacher. She will soon choose between several teaching fellowships and graduate programs in Boston and New York.

Why not San Francisco?

"There's a huge contingent of young people who aren't really doing anything here, and I've somehow fallen into that crowd," says Ms. Klasovsky, adding that at least a third of her friends have either moved or decided to move in the last year.

Mr. Colin, a photography major, says he was laid off from his first job at a photo lab. He revised his career goals and sought work in a nonprofit that's focused on environmental conservation. After a handful of interviews, he had no offers. He hasn't given up, but he's broadened his search, and recently interviewed for a job at a media start-up. He was rejected. In the meantime, he's doing temporary data entry and administrative work at local companies. "I'm getting less and less young, and it's kind of a depressing situation," he says.

Hilary Konrad, the third roommate, says she plans to move to Boston in the next six months for graduate school. A painter from Portland, Maine, Ms. Konrad worked in a coffee shop to pay the bills, but she just quit. She says she was shaken after discovering that a homeless person had spent the night in the cafe bathroom. "The coffee shop wasn't people coming in for coffee -- it was a lot of homeless people. I'm a sensitive person, and I got very sad from it."

"Young creative people have been moving to San Francisco since the '60s because it's known as a place where you can experiment, both artistically and personally," says Beth Lisick, a Bay Area native who wrote a column about youth culture, the arts and nightlife for the San Francisco Chronicle's Web site from 1997 to 2005, when she was in her late 20s and early 30s.

In the city, she says, "there's not the pressure to be 'a success.' Of course this is totally ironic because San Francisco is an extremely expensive place to live and if you're not succeeding at least somewhat financially then you've got to figure out somewhere else to go."

Chris Van Pelt, originally from Iowa, is someone who moved there with a job. While living in San Diego, the 25-year-old was recruited by a friend to come north and work at a search engine start-up called Powerset. The software engineer never had a dream to live in the city, but says he appreciates working in the geographic center of his industry.

Joanna Luu, from Houston originally, was hired out of college as an online media planner at digital marketing agency Avenue A/Razorfish, in San Francisco. The 24-year-old says she studied online advertising at the University of Texas, finished two summer internships in the field before graduation and utilized her school's career counseling center to prepare for job interviews. "The job I got was through networking my senior year in Austin," she says. Ms. Luu researched the cost of living before the move, so the city's pricey amenities weren't a shock.

If you're going to San Francisco, it's still okay to wear flowers in your hair, but be sure to arrive with a job.

Write to Emily Meehan at actone@wsj.com

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