The population in the Bay Area and California shrank during 2021 for the second consecutive year in a slump that was driven in large part by big declines in San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles, according to a new state report.
In an unsettling twist, San Jose no longer has 1 million residents, the state Department of Finance report determined.
As of 2021, San Jose — still the Bay Area’s largest city — had an estimated population of 976,500. The U.S. Census official report released in 2020 had placed San Jose’s population at 1.01 million people.
The Bay Area population declined by slightly more than 50,400 people in 2021, a decrease of 0.7%, which was more than twice the rate of the overall California population decrease of 0.3%, or nearly 117,600 people, this news organization’s analysis of the new state Finance Department report shows.
The slowdown was triggered by a slump in births and immigration, a rise in deaths and an ongoing exodus from California, the state agency reported.
“The addition of COVID-19-related deaths, federal policies restricting immigration, and an increase in domestic out-migration affected population totals,” the state Finance Department said. “Overall growth was also affected by continuing federal delays in processing foreign migration.”
The Bay Area population nosedive accounted for 42.9% of the population decline statewide, even though the nine-county region represents just 19.4% of California’s total population.
San Jose lost nearly 14,700 residents in 2021, which was a 1.5% decrease from 2020 — and a rate of decline that was five times greater than the pace statewide.
San Francisco lost 6,700 residents, a drop of 0.8%, while Oakland lost 5,600 residents, a decline of 1.3%, the state population estimate shows.
While 2021 marks the second year in a row that California has lost residents after more than a century of growth, some experts don’t expect continued shrinkage.
“The population decline is real, but the decline also is temporary,” said Steve Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “COVID deaths will ease off, immigration levels will rise. We are still adding jobs in the Bay Area.”
Here are some population totals and trends for California, the Bay Area and the region’s five largest cities, according to the state Department of Finance estimate:
— California, 39.19 million residents, a decline of 117,552, or 0.3%
— Bay Area, 7.61 million residents, down 50,434, or 0.7%
— San Jose, 976,482, down 14,662, or 1.5%
— San Francisco, 842,754, down 6,721, or 0.8%
— Oakland, 424,464 residents, down 5,636, or 1.3%
— Fremont, 229,476, up 604, an increase of 0.3%
— Santa Rosa, 175,775, down 1,621, or a decrease of 0.9%
Rounding out the 10 largest cities in the Bay Area in 2021: Hayward had 160,591 residents, a decline of 1,153, or 0.7%; Sunnyvale had 156,234 residents, an increase of 908 people, up 0.6%; Santa Clara had 130,127 residents, up 1,005 people, a 0.8% increase; Berkeley had 124,563 residents, up 3,294, or 2.7%; and Concord had 123,634 residents, a decline of 1,121 people, or 0.9%.
Of statewide note: One of the biggest population gainers among California cities in 2021 was Santa Cruz. The seaside municipality added 6,481 people, an increase of 11.3% from the year before, for a new total of 64,075 residents.
It’s possible that at least some people who defected from the Bay Area decided to move to an adjacent county.
Two Bay Area-adjacent counties experienced the largest percent increases among the 58 California counties.
Yolo County posted a 1.8% increase in population while San Benito County’s population grew 1.1%, the state report indicated. San Joaquin County’s population rose 0.2%.
“Huge percentages of those leaving aren’t departing the Bay Area,” said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a San Jose-based think tank. “They’re just going to the perimeter, where housing is more affordable.”
Despite the slump, California remains the nation’s most populous state. Texas was a distant second with 29.5 million residents.
Critics point to the steady stream of people leaving California as an indictment of the state’s liberal policies, which are set by Democrats in the governor’s office and the state legislature.
But, Hancock said, “the exodus also reflects our high cost of housing and our inability so far to do anything about that.”
Bay Area home prices in February soared 17% compared with the same month the year before and the median price for the expensive nine-county region jumped above 1.1 million, according to a CoreLogic report.
About 280,000 more people left California for other states than moved here in 2021, continuing a decades-long trend.
Impacts of the decline have already been felt, as California recently lost a seat in Congress for the first time after the U.S. Census showed it did not grow as fast as other states.
Some critics of California’s sour business climate, whose features include red tape and a byzantine regulatory structure, point to high-profile corporate departures such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle, Tesla and Palantir. Yet while administrative offices decamped, the vast majority of these companies’ Bay Area jobs remain in this region.
“So far, with the exception of four headline-grabbing exceptions,” Hancock said, “Silicon Valley companies are staying put and putting down deeper roots.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
