What this dashboard answers
A first healthcare job is a real achievement. The question here is what comes next: which entry roles in San Francisco lead to a job that pays a living wage, and which tend to plateau. Choose a household type at the top right: the wage pages (The need, Which jobs clear the bar, Career ladder) recalculate against that living wage. Workforce composition does not depend on it, and the progression metric is defined on the single-adult benchmark.
- The need: who works full time and still earns below a living wage.
- Which jobs clear the bar: healthcare occupations whose typical entry education is below a bachelor's degree, by SF wage.
- Career ladder: which occupations people move to when they leave each entry role, and what those occupations typically pay in SF.
- Who holds the jobs: the workforce on each rung, by race and sex.
- Measuring progress: a living-wage progression metric for a training program.
Share of SF full-time workers earning below the living wage
Table view
ACS PUMS 2020-2024 5-year, San Francisco residents aged 18-64 working 35+ hours a week and 50+ weeks a year. Wages in 2024 dollars; the MIT threshold (December 2025 dollars) is converted to 2024 dollars with San Francisco CPI. Whiskers are 90% margins of error from the Census replicate weights.
Healthcare occupations below the bachelor's level, by SF hourly wage
Table view
Dot = median, bar = 25th to 75th percentile. EDD OEWS, San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City (May 2025 employment, wages aged to 2026 Q1), joined to EDD 2023-2033 projections. "Below the bachelor's level" is typical entry education per BLS: 12 of the 36 occupations typically require an associate's degree.
Entry roles: SF wage and upward mobility
Of people who leave each role, the share who move up into a clinical (hands-on patient-care) job whose SF median wage is at or above the selected living wage. The shading shows how many move up, from the scale's light end (fewest) to its strong end (most). Hover or tap any bubble for its figures; click one to explore it.
Data: SF wages from California EDD's 2025 wage survey, adjusted to early 2026 · job moves from 16 million US resumes, 2002 to 2015 · living wage from MIT, 2026.
Where people go
Most common destinations
Transitions: Schubert, Stansbury & Taska (2021), national resumes 2002-2015, among people who change occupation. Wages: SF 2026. The two are shown side by side, never combined into a single SF probability. Destination wages are occupation medians, not what the people who moved earned. "Clinical" excludes six healthcare occupations that are administrative or non-clinical: health services managers, medical secretaries, medical records specialists, health information technologists, medical transcriptionists and community health workers.
Who works on each rung
By race, entry-level healthcare work in San Francisco is done disproportionately by Asian and Black workers. The LVN and RN rung looks much more like the city's workforce as a whole. Both are mostly women, as healthcare is generally.
Table view
ACS PUMS 2020-2024, employed SF residents. Estimates with fewer than 50 records or a coefficient of variation above 30% are marked with a dagger (†) and shown for completeness only.
Measuring progress: the living-wage progression rate
Two measures, reported together because they answer different questions. Coaches can use them to see who is stalled below the line, program leads to compare cohorts, and funders to see an outcome that goes past placement.
| Living-wage progression rate (headline) | Of participants whose hourly wage at placement was below the benchmark, the share with a verified hourly wage at or above it at the 24-month follow-up. People already above the line at placement are excluded, so they cannot inflate it |
|---|---|
| Living-wage attainment rate | Of all participants placed, the share at or above the benchmark at the 12-month follow-up, and separately at the 24-month follow-up |
| Follow-up timing | 12 and 24 months after placement, each within a two-month window either side; the most recent verified wage in the window is used. Each rate is measured at that follow-up, not "at any point by" it |
| Denominators | Everyone in scope, including those not reached. Unreached participants are reported as their own category, never dropped |
| Wage | Hourly wage from the follow-up record; if only annual earnings exist, earnings ÷ (usual weekly hours × weeks worked) |
| Wage change | Median change in hourly wage from placement to each follow-up, reported alongside so progress that stops short of the line is visible |
| Benchmark | MIT SF single adult, fixed at the value published when the participant was placed |
| Tiers alongside | Below living wage; single adult; two earners with one child; two earners with two children |
| Disaggregation | Race/ethnicity, sex, entry role, program, reported by default rather than on request. Cells under 10 suppressed and noted, so small groups are protected without dropping out of the count |
| Data needed | Placement date, occupation (SOC), hourly wage and hours at placement and each follow-up, follow-up status |
Logic model
| Inputs | Coaching staff; employer partners; LVN school partners; tuition and wraparound funds |
|---|---|
| Activities | Recruit working alumni; prerequisite and entrance-exam prep; enrolment support; retention coaching |
| Outputs | Participants enrolled; prerequisites completed; LVN program admissions |
| Short-term (0-12 months) | Program retention; continued employment during training; wage held or rising |
| Long-term (24+ months) | LVN licensure and placement; at or above the living wage at the 24-month follow-up; progress toward RN |
Why federal indicators are not enough on their own
A WIOA performance score is achieved performance divided by a negotiated target, not an outcome rate. San Francisco's Adult median-earnings target for PY2022 and PY2023 was $7,600 a quarter (EDD Workforce Services Information Notice WSIN22-14). Forty hours a week for 13 weeks at the single-adult living wage comes to about $16,400 in 2024 dollars. A program can beat its federal target and its median participant's quarterly earnings can still sit well below a full-time living-wage quarter. That reflects the measure, not any program. The living-wage progression rate asks the question the federal measures leave open: not did they find work, but did the work lead somewhere.
User manual
Getting around
- Pages are the tabs under the title. Each page answers one question, listed on the Overview.
- Living wage for (top right) sets the benchmark for the Overview tiles, The need, Which jobs clear the bar and Career ladder. Who holds the jobs does not depend on a wage, and the metric on Measuring progress is defined on the single-adult benchmark. Values are MIT Living Wage for San Francisco County, hourly, per working adult. "Single adult" is the default and the least demanding household type: a wage that misses it misses every single-earner household.
- Hover (or tap on a phone) any bar, dot or bubble for its exact values and sample details.
- Table view under each chart shows the same numbers as a table, for screen readers, copying, or checking.
- Career ladder: click a bubble or use the role menu to see where people in that role go next.
- The page remembers your theme choice on this device. Links like
#ladderopen a page directly.
What each measure means
| Below living wage (The need) | Share of full-time, year-round workers whose hourly wage, annual wages ÷ (usual weekly hours × weeks worked), is below the benchmark converted to 2024 dollars |
|---|---|
| Median, 25th, 75th percentile | EDD OEWS hourly wage percentiles for the SF-San Mateo-Redwood City area. The 25th percentile marks the lower end of an occupation's pay range; OEWS covers all workers, not new hires, so it indicates rather than measures entry pay |
| Openings | EDD projected total openings 2023-2033: growth plus people leaving the occupation or the labour force |
| Projected transfers out per year | A constructed ratio, not an observed rate: EDD's projected occupational transfers 2023-2033 (workers projected to leave for a different occupation) ÷ 10 years ÷ 2023 employment |
| Stayed in healthcare | Of people who leave a role, the share who move to any other healthcare job, at any pay. Includes office, admin and management roles, so it is broader than "moved up" |
| Clinical occupation at or above living wage | Of people who leave a role (nationally), the share moving to a clinical occupation whose SF median wage meets the benchmark. Uses occupation medians, not movers' own earnings. Excludes managers, medical secretaries, records, health information, transcription and community health work |
| Combined roles | EMT / paramedic and medical records each became two occupations in 2018. Their SF wage is the employment-weighted mean of the two occupations' figures, an approximation of the combined median |
| Rung / partial / plateau | 30%+ / 15-30% / under 15% on the measure above. Analytical cuts, shown so they can be debated |
Caveats to keep in mind
- National moves, local wages. Transition shares are national and from 2002-2015; wages are San Francisco 2026. They describe how occupations connect, not current SF odds.
- Only people who changed occupation are in the transition shares. Staying put is not counted.
- Split occupations are divided evenly. Where one 2010 occupation became several 2018 occupations, moves are split evenly across the successors. The crosswalk does not say how workers actually divided, so this is an assumption; weighting by SF employment instead moves no figure by more than 0.25 points.
- Resumes over-represent people with degrees, which probably overstates upward moves for every role. Comparisons between roles are more reliable than any single level.
- Survey uncertainty. ACS figures carry margins of error; unreliable cells are flagged, not hidden.
- Public data describes the market, not any program's participants. Participant records are what answer where a program's own alumni go.
How it stays current
A scheduled job re-downloads every source, rebuilds every table from scratch, and republishes this page. The build date is in the footer. Each source, its URL and the date it was retrieved are listed below; the repository's data/raw/MANIFEST.csv also records a checksum for each file.