[Yonhap]
[Yonhap]

"Even with an annual salary of 300 million won ($195,000), housing and rent are barely manageable."

As the AI industry boom draws talent and capital to San Francisco — the heart of Silicon Valley — even high-earning tech workers are struggling under soaring housing costs and living expenses.

According to The New York Times on June 29, the ongoing wave of AI investment has intensified San Francisco's housing affordability crisis. AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic have been aggressively competing for talent, driving up demand.

San Francisco was already among the most expensive cities in the United States, but analysts say the AI industry's rapid growth is pushing the housing market further into overheated territory.

According to the latest cost-of-living index from the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER), living costs in San Francisco run 65.6 percent above the national average.

The gap in home prices is even starker. The median home price in San Francisco stands at $1.7 million, more than three times the national median of $450,000.

Rents are also among the highest in the country. According to real estate data firm CoStar, the average monthly rent for a San Francisco apartment has soared to $3,827.

Nigel Hughes, a senior researcher at CoStar, described the city's rental market as "like a pressure cooker heating up fast."

The rise in housing costs is spilling over into other areas of daily life. Utility bills run 41 percent above the national average, transportation costs are 43 percent higher, and grocery prices are 19 percent more expensive.

Despite these pressures, the average annual salary for San Francisco workers reaches $196,365. Yet analysts say that once housing and living expenses are factored in, workers have little financial breathing room.

Ted Egan, San Francisco's chief economist, said high earners have long weighed "whether to accept the trade-offs of San Francisco or move somewhere else with a yard and a garage."

Market observers widely expect that as the AI industry grows, Silicon Valley's housing crunch will deepen. With high-paying jobs and capital flowing in rapidly while new housing supply fails to keep pace, rising residential costs could become a long-term drag on companies' ability to attract talent and on the region's overall competitiveness.


rainbow@heraldcorp.com