credit:
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/06/18/wells-fargo-bank-san-francisco-jobs-wfc-housing.html
Wells Fargo said it’s moving almost 100 jobs in its commercial treasury business out of San Francisco, where rising housing costs and growing traffic congestion has nearly half of Bay Area residents looking to leave.
Wells was quick to say Monday that the relocation of 91 jobs out of San Francisco, and the elimination of five more in the city, was driven by the need to have employees in that part of the bank work in closer proximity to each other.
But moving jobs out of San Francisco, even this modest amount, is likely to resonate with those pondering a move to cities where their dollars would go further.
The business-sponsored Bay Area Council advocacy group released this month its annual survey of registered voters in the nine-county Bay Area that found 46 percent of respondents are likely to move away, the highest percentage in three years.
Housing costs topped the list of issues for the fourth straight year, with 42 percent of those polled by the Bay Area Council saying in an open-ended question that the housing crisis was the most troubling issue.
Wells Fargo said it will move 64 positions to the Southern California city of El Monte, where the median home price is about a third of San Francisco’s. The bank is moving another 27 positions to other sites in Chandler, Ariz., near Phoenix; Salt Lake City; Minneapolis; and Winston-Salem, N.C.
The loss of the 96 jobs in San Francisco is effective Sept. 28, according to a WARN notice that Wells (NYSE: WFC) filed with California regulators.
“Wells Fargo is consolidating a small number of its customer-facing and operations roles for its commercial treasury business to select U.S. facilities,” said Wells spokesman Ruben Pulido. “This is an opportunity to maximize our workspace and find ways for more team members working together to be in closer proximity.”
The bank said it offered relocation packages to a majority of the affected employees.
Wells Fargo continues to employ 8,000 people in San Francisco, almost half of the bank’s Bay Area workforce of 16,500. Charlotte, the former headquarters of Wachovia that Wells bought in 2008, is the San Francisco-based bank’s largest employment center. Wells has a workforce of 25,100 employees in the Charlotte area.
Wells is far from alone in assessing jobs in San Francisco as some of the biggest names in tech grab space and talent in the city. Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), for instance, last month signed the biggest lease in San Francisco history.
The U.S. National Park Service said this month that it plans to uproot its west regional office in San Francisco to move it to Vancouver, Wash.
“We have struggled with recruitment in San Francisco for years due to the high cost of living,” the park service’s Regional Director Stan Austin wrote in a staff memo obtained by KQED.
That point echoes the leadership of the California Public Utilities Commission, which said in May that it plans to move positions from San Francisco to Sacramento because the agency is having trouble finding new employees who can afford to live in the Bay Area. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $3,258 per month, compared to Sacramento’s average rent of $1,137 for a one-bedroom apartment, according to apartment site RentCafe.
“It’s hard to find a place to live in San Francisco on a state employee salary,” said Michael Picker, president of the CPUC.