Bay Area counties continue to see population losses, but 2023 was smallest drop since exodus began

Four counties are still losing residents year over year, which puts them in the minority of U.S. counties.

Another year, and another census update showing the Bay Area’s population has dropped.

But the newest population estimates for July 1, 2023, released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau, show the losses were the smallest the region has seen since the pandemic marked the beginning of a dramatic population exodus, which is now slowing and showing signs of reversing.

Of the core Bay Area counties, San Francisco was the only one that saw an increase in population in 2023, after having the most dramatic drop early in the pandemic.

Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley has some theories about why the recent trend is reversing, especially in San Francisco.

“We seem to be turning a corner on the work-from-home phenomenon,” Hancock said. And like others, he sees the explosion in buzz around AI technologies like ChatGPT as a big magnet for San Francisco and Silicon Valley. “If you’re a person who is into big data, machine learning, massive computational processing, futuristic stuff, this is where you would want to be.”

In the rest of the Bay Area, counties are still losing residents year over year. That puts them in the minority of counties in the country. According to the bureau’s analysis of all counties, about 60% (1,876) of U.S. counties gained population from 2022 to 2023, an increase from the 52% of counties (1,649) that experienced population growth between 2021 and 2022.

“Domestic migration patterns are changing, and the impact on counties is especially evident,” said Lauren Bowers, chief of the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Branch.

The average county-level population increase was 0.29% in 2023, nearly twice the average increase of 0.17% in 2022. While Bay Area counties might be behind the curve, they’re headed in the same direction. Every Bay Area county lost fewer residents in 2023 than the previous year.

Overall the 5-county area saw a 2.6% decrease in population from July 1, 2020, through July 1, 2021, a 0.7% decrease the next year, and the most recent year it only dropped by 0.16%. Each of the 10 years before that, the region recorded increases in population, though the growth was slower in the years before the pandemic than earlier that decade.

Over the last year, the five-county Bay Area — Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties — lost just over 10,000 residents in total since 2022.

Census demographers take into account “natural change,” which is births minus deaths, and then how many people move.

The counties had an estimated 60,000 births in that year, and 40,000 deaths, for a net increase of 20,000 residents. But more people left the region than moved here during that period.

The Bay Area lost over 80,000 residents to other parts of the state and the country from 2022 to 2023. Meanwhile, the region gained 50,000 new residents from international immigration.

International immigration was once a much bigger boon to the region’s population, but it dropped dramatically starting after 2016, during the Trump administration, and then again during pandemic travel restrictions.

“The Silicon Valley story is the story of really capable, talented people coming from overseas,” Hancock said. So he is happy to see signs that international immigration is returning to pre-2016 levels.