Bay Area exodus exceeds arrivals by wide margin

Study: In 2020, most left job centers in cities for the suburbs and beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided ample time for life reassessment, and in the Bay Area, that’s meant moving.

Migrations out of the region jumped during the health crisis, with a 30% increase in people moving out of San Francisco compared to 2019, according to a new study of the 11-county region by the California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley and UCLA.

The flow of new people into the Bay Area — stymied by travel and safety restrictions — continued a pre-pandemic trend of lagging moves. The study did not measure foreign migrations, which historically have been a source of population growth for the region.

“While a mass exodus from California clearly didn’t happen in 2020, the pandemic did change some historical patterns,” said Natalie Holmes, the author of the report and a research fellow at California Policy Lab. The number of people leaving the Bay Area and California spiked during the last three months of the year.

“Fewer people moved into the state to re

place those who left,” Holmes said.

Bay Area leaders have sounded increasing alarm over outward migration, concerned with the loss of talented workers and promising companies. Surveys of Bay Area residents before the pandemic showed increasing frustration with traffic, escalating housing costs and a rise in homeless populations. Rising unemployment has forced others to abandon expensive apartments and leave the area.

For many Bay Area residents, COVID-19 accelerated

the decision to move, said Jeff Bellisario, director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. The rise in remote work and the longterm possibility of fewer days spent in the office has driven residents away from job centers to the suburbs and beyond, he said.

U.S. Postal Service data showed almost 650,000 Californians left the state in 2020, a jump of 15% from the previous year, according to a Bay Area Council analysis. The outwardbound population was not offset by incoming residents.

“The numbers do point to more movement, and more movement out of the state,” Bellisario said.

The California Policy Lab analyzed the residential locations of Californians who have a credit history to determine whether they were staying put, moving into a region, or moving out of a region.

The study found residents left the Bay Area faster than people came in. The migration away from the Bay Area and, in particular, San Francisco, was far more severe than for the rest of California.

All 11 counties in the region saw outward migrations increase during the pandemic, with the greatest shift coming in the last three months of 2020. Despite forecasts of a Bay Area nuclear winter, many residents simply moved to another part of the region or state. For example, in San Francisco, two-thirds of the city’s movers stayed in the region, and 80% stayed in California, similar to previous migration patterns.

During the fourth quarter of 2020, roughly 114,600 people left the Bay Area, up 29.7% from the same period in 2019. At the same time, researchers estimated about 267,000 people left California, an increase of 14.9%.

Far fewer people came into the state and Bay Area over the same three-month periods.

About 54,200 people entered the Bay Area in the fourth quarter of 2020, down 27.1% from the final three months of 2019. About 127,600 people came to California

in the fourth quarter, down 30.4% from the year before.

The final months of the year showed an increased movement away from Bay Area cities and into the suburbs. San Francisco experienced “a unique and dramatic exodus,” Holmes said.

The city had 35,900 people leave during the last three months of 2020, a jump of 61% from the prior year. About 15,000 new residents moved into San Francisco, a drop of 25%.

Both Santa Clara (38,400 people) and Alameda (37,400 people) counties saw 20% jumps in people leaving during the final three months of 2020, according to Berkeley researchers. Newcomers did not make up the difference.

But Marin and Contra Costa counties saw more people coming into their communities at the end of 2020 than during the same period of 2019.

The study noted that it’s too soon to tell how longlasting or extensive the exodus might be. But experts warned that the implications could be enormous.

“The stakes are high,” the California Policy Lab stated in its report. “Significant population shifts could affect the size and composition of regional labor markets as well as rent and home values.”