2021-2023年东湾工作状态

OCTOBER 2025 1Savannah Hunter, Leila Tjiang,and Enrique Lopezlira Acknowledgments Thank you to the following individuals for their thoughtful review and suggestions: StasiaHansen, Kristi Laughlin, Kate O’Hara, and Patrick Wade. We acknowledge Julie Light, JeniferMacGillvary, Sandy Olgeirson for their support with communications. This report is supportedby a grant from The James Irvine Foundation. About the Authors Savannah Hunter is a senior researcher with the Low-Wage Work Program at the UC BerkeleyLabor Center. Leila Tjiang is a Master’s of City Planning student at UC Berkeley. EnriqueLopezlira is the director of the Low-Wage Work Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. Suggested Citation Hunter, Savannah, Leila Tjiang, and Enrique Lopezlira. “The State of Working East Bay,2021-2023.” UC Berkeley Labor Center, October 2025.https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/state-of-working-east-bay-2021-2023/. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Contents Executive Summary....................................................................................................................4Demographics of East Bay Workers......................................................................................6Wages, Annual Earnings, and Household Income............................................................9Economic Well-being..............................................................................................................19Industries and Occupations..................................................................................................26Housing Unaffordability.........................................................................................................31Commute Patterns..................................................................................................................36Conclusion: Supporting Worker Dignity in the East Bay............................................40Appendix Exhibits....................................................................................................................42Methods Appendix...................................................................................................................55Endnotes......................................................................................................................................59References..................................................................................................................................61 Executive Summary Our 2023 report,The State of Working East Bay, 2015-2019, offered a snapshot of the wagesand economic well-being of the workforce in California’s Alameda and Contra Costa Countiesfrom the period just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. It showed that even pre-pandemic,when the economy was strong by conventional economic metrics, workers—especially workersof color—were struggling to make ends meet. Our new report,The State of Working East Bay,2021–2023, covers the years of economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession. While therecovery presented an opportunity to lift workers above and beyond where they had been in2019, our analysis suggests that, at best, the East Bay workforce ended up about where it hadbeen pre-pandemic, which for many workers, particularly low-wage workers, was simply notenough. UC Berkeley Labor Center research found that in California, the COVID-19 pandemic shutdownand resulting economic downturn led to job losses, high unemployment, and a decline inwomen’s labor force participation (Lopezlira et al. 2022). Some workers were able to transitionto remote work, but workers in low-wage industries, workers of color, and workers with lowerlevels of education disproportionately felt the brunt of job losses (Lopezlira et al. 2022). Foressential workers in health care, public health, agriculture and food production, maintenance,janitorial, energy, transportation, retail and grocery, and many other industries, work carried ondespite health and safety risks. Compared to the economic recovery from the Great Recession of 2008, the post-pandemicrecovery was less ambiguous and significantly faster, likely due to factors including the quickdevelopment of the COVID-19 vaccine and fiscal policies that provided support for businessesand individuals (Labonte and Weinstock 2022). By the end of 2022, Bay Area employmenthad largely recovered from the pandemic-related job losses (Lopezlira and Scoggins 2023).Nationally, as businesses reopened, competition for workers became fierce, leading to a tightlabor market and real wage gains, especially among lower-paid workers (Autor, Dube, andMcGrew 2023). But also by 2022, COVID-era expanded government tax credits and socialprograms, which had kept many workers and their children out of poverty, were allowed toexpire, real median household income fell, and poverty rebounded (Creamer and Unrath2023). Additionally, high inflation and high interest rates combined wit