Tech job growth is driving the 21st century American dream

[Commentary] A new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research has just answered a question often asked of the San Francisco Bay Area: Why would anyone want to live where the median price of a house costs more than $500,000?" The answer: a better chance at upward economic mobility.

Using income data on 40 million Americans, the government research economists calculated how likely it was for a US family to go from the bottom fifth in annual income to the top fifth in one generation. San Franciscans had a 12.2% chance of this kind of life-changing economic prosperity, second-best for residents of the 50-largest US metro area, according to the report. Residents of the adjacent San Jose area, which includes the central mass of Silicon Valley tech headquarters, had the best chance of upwardly mobility, at 12.9%. Both cities therefore offer residents a roughly one-in-eight chance of significantly improving their family's economic prospects. That's been enough to keep people flocking to Northern California, driving up the median cost of a Bay Area home to $540,000, according to DataQuick. What most of those cities have in common is a lot of high-paying tech jobs, according to separate data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Higher salaries, which help drive up housing costs, help explain the rising number of evictions in the city – and the resulting street protests against tech commuter buses. Still, people keep moving to San Francisco, and the report by the Bureau of Economic Research suggests economic opportunity is a primary reason.