Few applicants for blue-collar jobs in S.F. Recruiters have a hard time in this high-cost city

Allison Grant (left) and Spencer Rinkus (right) of Uber discuss openings for drivers with a job seeker in San Francisco. Allison Grant (left) and Spencer Rinkus (right) of Uber discuss openings for drivers with a job seeker in San Francisco. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Few applicants for blue-collar jobs in S.F. 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

In her corner of the job fair, public sector recruiter Maria Flores was trying to fill blue-collar jobs that paid around $60,000. At a neighboring table, Rebecca Greene said she would talk to a thousand people about jobs paying $15 to $45 an hour at her company - if a thousand had showed up.

Instead, about 400 job seekers inquired about thousands of job opportunities Tuesday inside a Market Street hotel a smartphone throw away from Twitter headquarters.

"In any other city, this would be jammed," said Greene, who is general manager in Northern California for Handybook, which hires house cleaners and household repair workers.

That was a common refrain among recruiters at the fair - and a snapshot of how San Francisco's widening income gap is reshaping the city.

Many of the nine employers at the fair, organized by HIREvents, said it's hard to hire in a city where the unemployment rate is 4.4 percent, a six-figure income doesn't guarantee you can buy a house and a company doesn't score cool points without stock options or an in-house barista.

"We're finding that it's difficult to compete with the Facebooks and the Googles - the sexy tech companies," said Wendy Lague, a talent acquisition manager for EFI, a digital printing company.

Most of the recruiters were seeking applicants for middle-income, blue- and white-collar jobs - positions that are hard to build excitement about in San Francisco's tech-driven economy.

And while recruiters for Uber, the ride-for-hire app company, were at their first job fair, they weren't looking for programmers. They were seeking drivers. One-thousand of them.

The recruiter for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation could beat that order. She was seeking to fill 7,000 officer positions over the next three years. Her challenge wasn't much different from those in the private sector: The San Francisco Police Department pays better.

Recruiters seeking bus drivers, building managers, plumbers, regulatory analysts, and heating and cooling system engineers struggled to find folks willing to take a middle-wage job in a high-rent city.

"We are having a very difficult time hiring for a lot of positions," said Flores, a recruiter for the California Department of General Services. "We can't compete with the salaries in San Francisco."

Private employers are offering "$15 to $20 an hour more" than the $20 to $25 an hour her department pays.

Many of the applicants that approached Nancy Barroso, who was recruiting 20 financial services positions for Prudential, "were asking, 'Am I going to make enough to live here?' " she said.

That concern was top of mind for Olga Banks, a 50-year-old job-seeker who will graduate from San Francisco State in December with a degree in health care and community education - and $14,000 in student debt. Plus, her high school-age son will soon be incurring his own college debt.

If Banks doesn't find a job that pays enough, "I'm considering moving out of San Francisco," she said.

The problem isn't that there's a lack of workers, "it's that (employers) are not willing to pay them at the rate they want to be paid," said Sylvia Allegretto, an economist at the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley.

For some low-wage workers, that might change. This week, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee announced a compromise deal with labor, business leaders and community groups that will let voters decide in November whether the city should gradually raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2018 - the highest in the nation.

The plan would increase the city's minimum wage of $10.74 to $12.25 next May, $13 in July 2016 and $1 in each subsequent year until 2018, bringing the annual pay for a full-time worker to $31,000.

According to Allegretto, low- and middle-income job seekers - many of whom can't afford to live in the city - will face a difficult question: "Is it worth it for me to commute into San Francisco for this job?"