San Francisco Fed Key Facts

Of the 12 Federal Reserve Districts, the Twelfth District is the largest, covering about 1.4 million square miles, or 37 percent of the nation’s area.

• The District’s estimated 68.8 million people accounted for 21 percent of the total U.S. population in 2019.

The District also ranks first in the size of its economy:

• Its 30.5 million workers accounted for over 20 percent of the nation’s total nonfarm employment in 2019. Those workers earned more than 22 percent of the nation’s total personal income in 2019.
• Altogether, District states accounted for around 19 percent of the nation’s exports of manufactured goods in 2019.
• In broad terms, the District’s industry mix mirrors that of the rest of the nation.
  • However, the District employs a slightly higher share of workers in the following major sectors: construction, information, professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and government.
  • Several of the nation’s leading information technology (IT) centers are located in the District. As a percentage of total nonfarm workers, the District employs a considerably larger share of IT workers than the rest of the nation. Moreover, these District IT workers on average earn more in annual wages than IT workers in the rest of the nation.

The Twelfth District processed 18.9 billion currency notes in 2019, which is about 75.5 million notes per day. The Fed’s Cash Services department processes currency using high-speed computer-controlled machines that are each capable of verifying over 1,900 notes per minute. The machines intercept potential counterfeits and destroy old, worn out notes.

As of June 30, 2020, there were 172 bank holding companies, 18 savings and loan holding companies, 34 state member banks, 37 national banks, and 198 state-chartered, non-member banks in the District. In addition, the District is home to 61 U.S. branches, agencies, and representative offices of foreign banks and three Edge Act agreement corporations.

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco had assets of $495.5 billion and operating expenses of $746 million as of December 31, 2019.

During 2019, the Federal Reserve System’s earnings totaled approximately $55.5 billion. Approximately $54.9 billion was remitted to the United States Treasury and the Twelfth District’s share was $5.2 billion.

In 2019, the Federal Reserve System cleared 4.4 billion commercial checks, of which 99.99% were deposited electronically. In addition, 15.6 billion commercial and 1.7 billion government payments were processed as Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions. The Federal Reserve processes approximately two fifths of the interbank check transactions and nearly three quarters of the ACH payments in the country.