San Francisco, like many another ‘anchor’ city for a metropolitan area, has a lot of commuter jobs. I’m not prepared to quantify ‘a lot’. But here’s a way to quantify the numbers:
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Take the (adjusted Census) population of San Francisco.
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From that number, identify how many are gainfully employed, and how many fall in other demographics: schoolchildren, preschool kids, unemployed, retired, homemakers, etc.
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Take a Labor Department statistic or estimate on how many jobs are physically located in San Francisco.
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Take the ‘gainfully employed residents’ from #2, eliminate the small satistical handful of people who live in SF and work elsewhere (“I teach at Berkeley but I love the ambience of the city” and the like). Subtract the resultant number from the figure in #3. These comprise the ‘daytime-only’ population – they are in the city daily (except days off, holidays, etc.) making use of its resources and contributing to its consumer economy, but are not census-definition residents. They’re included in the ‘number of people you meet’ figure.
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Take the Chamber of Commerce or tourism bureau estimate of the average daily number of tourists, which for SF is a serious figure.
Youi now have a working universe of staistics. The Census figure will give you how many people eat and sleep in SF, he base population. Add the tourism figure for a ‘nighttime population.’
Now, add in the commuters you calculated in #4 to give a ‘daytime population.’ This will be a higher number because nearly all the ‘nighttime’ residents will still be there in the daytime – the kids in school, the preschoolers and homemakers at home, the unemployed and retired doing whatever they do during the day. The employed residents, less those few who commute out, will be there – and so will those who live in the East Bay, Marin County, down the Peninsula, and commute into the city for jobs. And the tourists will be active during the day, a not insignificant figure for somewhere like SF.
Anyone want to take a stab at getting the actual figures? The Polycarp Rectal Statistical Bureau (i.e., where I pulled hypothetical estimates by way of example from) says:
800K residents
–6K homeless included
–450K employed, of whom 10K work outside the city
–350K ‘not gainfully employed’ (students under 18, small children, disabled, retired, homemakers, and all the other ‘niche’ statistics)
900K jobs in the city
–440K held by city residents
–460K held by commuters
25K average daily tourists
Nighttime population: 800K residents + 25K tourists = 825K
Daytime population: 790K residents (800K less the 10K working elsewhere) + 460K commuters + 25K tourists = 1275K
Probability a randomly encountered person in SF during the day is a resident = 62%, a non-resident = 38%
The real numbers will obviously be different, but that’s a rough-guess scenario.