San Francisco
Prop 22 engaged-time floor (derived)
tap to expand auditWhat was directly verified: sf.gov Minimum Wage Ordinance page confirms current SF minimum wage is $19.18/hr (until July 1, 2026, then rises to $19.61). Prop 22 mechanism confirmed at the LA verification step (same applies to SF).
What was directly verified: sf.gov Minimum Wage Ordinance page confirms current SF minimum wage is $19.18/hr (until July 1, 2026, then rises to $19.61). Prop 22 mechanism confirmed at the LA verification step (same applies to SF).
What was assumed (not directly verified)
The arithmetic $19.18 × 1.20 = $23.016 ≈ $23.02 was performed by us, not cited directly. Considered structurally correct given the verified inputs.
Caveats a journalist should understand
Same as LA above — this is the engaged-time legal floor, not actual hourly earnings. UC Berkeley 2024 study covers SF Bay Area gig drivers and found similar gap between floor and reality.
What would invalidate this
SF city min wage increase July 1, 2026 (rate becomes $23.53). Same Prop 22-level events as LA.
Re-verify by
2026-07-29 (and again immediately after July 1, 2026 SF min wage increase)
Earnings (USD per hour)
Source: SF Office of Labor Standards Enforcement (Prop 22 1.2× multiplier applied)
What would you take home in San Francisco?
Take-home, weekly
$496
Take-home, monthly
$2,148
Gross, weekly
$691
Gross, monthly
$2,993
With a 1BR apartment outside the city centre at $2771/mo, rent costs more than your monthly take-home (129% of monthly net).
Take-home is gross hourly minus an estimated tax/expense rate per country. See the methodology page for the derivation. This widget assumes you actually work the hours you set. For app-based delivery, a portion of logged-in time is unpaid waiting; the headline rate reflects engaged time only where regulators have defined it.
Cost of living vs. earnings
That works out to roughly 39 hours per week. Rent at $2,771 per month is 70 percent of gross monthly earnings, which puts a San Francisco delivery driver in HUD's “severely cost-burdened” band by the federal definition (over 30 percent of gross income on housing). Measured against net take-home pay, which is what a worker actually has available to spend, the same rent is 97 percent. Affordable rent at this earnings rate, defined by HUD as no more than 30 percent of gross income, would be around $1,190 per month. Across the 46 cities in the dataset, San Francisco ranks 23rd for hours needed to cover rent, where lower is better.
Pay vs. local labour market
Gross hourly is 86% of local minimum wage, 44% of local median.
Notes
CA Prop 22 sets minimum pay floor at 120% of local minimum wage on engaged time for app-based delivery (food, grocery, and other consumer delivery). SF minimum wage 8.67/hr.
View San Francisco on the interactive map
See full source citations for this city on the sources page. Read about how each metric is computed in the methodology.
Primary earnings source: www.sf.gov/information--minimum-wage-ordinance · archived