San Francisco’s budget is bigger than 17 U.S. states

San Francisco’s budget is larger than 17 U.S. states including New Mexico ($10.5B), Alabama ($12.6B), and Oklahoma ($12.6B). At $15.9B total, the scale of our city budget is massive. This analysis is based on fiscal year 2024, when our city budget was $14.6B.

Our city budget has surged by 54% since 2012 (inflation-adjusted) – adding $5.5B extra dollars– and city hall staffing has risen 27%. And yet the San Francisco population is down 45,000 people since 2019, a 5% decrease in population that brings us back to 2012 population levels. This has been the largest population exodus from our city since 1906. So we have added 7,000 staff and $5.5B dollars to our budget since 2012 but have the same population as we did in 2012. So perhaps it comes as no surprise that the official city forecast of our annual budget deficit is $1.5B by FY 2030.

Our city budget is unique because San Francisco is a combined city and county. The services a county would usually provide such as public health, welfare, and elections are all bundled into our budget. This has benefits like streamlined services but also redundancies like the fact that we have both a Police Department and Sheriff. Our city budget also includes “enterprise departments” which are run like independent entities and are largely self-funding because they charge their users fees for service. These enterprise departments include the Airport, Port, Public Utilities Commission, and the MTA. Technically speaking, each of these enterprise departments should be self-sustaining – and in practice, all of them except the MTA are. The MTA receives significant general fund support to the tune of $540M+. MTA alone has grown $345M since 2012.

While this combined city/county system makes comparison to other cities difficult, there are eight other city/county combinations in the U.S. with similar populations – from one half to two times San Francisco’s. These are Denver, Philadelphia, Honolulu, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Nashville, and New Orleans. To make sure the comparison is appropriate, we remove the enterprise departments from each of these city budgets (such as the airport and public utilities). The average budget per capita of these eight cities is $6,300, when adjusted to reflect the cost of living in San Francisco. Yet San Francisco’s budget per capita is $12,100.

City Budget Benchmarks (Consolidated Cities and Counties)

Source: Peer City Budget Books, Budget | DataSF

How did the SF budget end up twice as big per capita as its peer cities? Are we getting twice the services, or twice the quality? Let's dig into why the San Francisco budget has surged by 54% to $14.6B since 2012.

9 Departments grew $146M-$871M each, leading to $2.9B in cost increase from 2012-2025 (inflation-adjusted)

Source: Budget | DataSF

Just two of these nine departments accounted for half of the $3B budget increase: the Department of Public Health and the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

Between 2010 and 2020, the Department of Public Health’s (DPH) budget grew by 66.1%, rising from $1.46 billion in FY 2010-11 to $2.43 billion in FY 2019-20. During the pandemic, DPH’s budget grew by 1 billion dollars. As of 2024, DPH’s budget was $3.2 billion. The main drivers of this growth were the hiring of 1,216 additional employees — a 21% increase in staff — and a 39.2% increase in behavioral health contracts, which now account for $1.3 billion in multi-year funding.

The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), founded only in 2016, has also seen rapid cost growth in a short period. Most of HSH’s spending goes toward its “Housing First” initiative, which has dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to developing permanent supportive housing across the city.

San Francisco employs 22,000 people for core city/county functions and the average salary is $205K

Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2025/sf-city-employees/

Because San Francisco is both a city and a county and operates large enterprise departments — like the airport, public utilities, and the port — we need to adjust when evaluating employee spending. Enterprise departments are largely self-funded through fees and charges, and their staffing levels can obscure the true size of the general government workforce. After accounting for these factors, San Francisco’s employee compensation is about $3,200 per resident — 42% higher than Los Angeles, the next highest city, and over 200% higher than the median peer city in California.

A major driver of San Francisco’s rising budget is the growth in city employees. The city employs approximately 33,000 people in total, but when excluding enterprise departments and focusing only on core city and county services, that number falls to about 22,000 employees.

This translates to 24.4 employees per 1,000 residents — 13% higher than Baltimore, which has the next-highest ratio. Compared to other major cities, San Francisco’s staffing is 18% higher than New York City, 40% higher than Los Angeles, and 42% higher than Portland and Boston.

Between 2018 and 2025, San Francisco’s employee headcount grew by 2,344 employees (an 8% increase). Five departments — Public Health, Human Services, Homelessness, City Administration, and MTA — account for 61% of that growth. If San Francisco returned to 2018 staffing levels, it would mean a 12% reduction in workforce, or about 4,100 fewer employees.

Meanwhile, 58% of city employees live outside of San Francisco, and 25% work from home two or more days per week. The six departments that have hired the most since 2018 now make up half of the city’s current work-from-home workforce (5,292 employees).

(Source: San Francisco Examiner)

$5.8B spent across 10,900 active contracts with 4K+ outside vendors

San Francisco currently spends $5.8 billion on contracts with outside vendors, managing 10,900 active contracts across more than 4,000 vendors. Of these vendors, about 600 (15%) are nonprofit organizations. As of 2023, 52 of those nonprofits had their nonprofit status revoked, suspended, or marked delinquent by the California Attorney General’s Office.

Among the city’s largest vendors — those with contracts worth more than $100 million — nonprofits make up an even larger share: 36%, more than twice the overall rate.

The city’s grant program has also expanded significantly. Since 2018, the grant budget has grown by $1 billion, reaching $1.6 billion in 2025. This funding is concentrated in six departments: Homelessness, Early Childhood, Children and Families, Human Services, Economic and Workforce Development, and the Office of the Mayor.

The Civil Grand Jury has raised concerns about San Francisco’s contracting practices, calling for stronger goals, clearer metrics, and better oversight. They found a “significant opportunity to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse[…] without materially impacting outcomes for residents,” particularly in light of the $1 billion increase in grants since 2018.

Looking Ahead

San Francisco’s $14.6 billion budget is larger than the budgets of 17 U.S. states, yet the city faces mounting challenges: rising costs, shrinking population, and a looming $1.5 billion deficit by 2030. Staffing has grown by thousands even as resident numbers have fallen, spending on departments and contracts has surged, and our per-resident budget now doubles that of comparable cities. Despite San Francisco’s unique combined city-county structure, the scale of growth — in headcount, compensation, grants, and vendor contracts — far outpaces reasonable comparisons. As budget season begins, the city faces an urgent question: are we truly getting better services, better outcomes, and better value for the billions we are spending? It’s time for a serious examination of what we fund, why we fund it, and how we can ensure that San Francisco’s government is truly serving its residents effectively.