The pandemic will cause Californians to flee the state in 2021, a trend many saw as an alarming trend and some called it the end of the California Dream.
However, a new U.S. Census report shows a significant slowdown in trends last year, indicating a surge in immigration to the Golden State and Bay Area, especially immigration from abroad, as the state slows down to leave the country post-COVID. It suggests that you may be starting to apply the brakes.
The Bay Area will still lose 53,000 residents in 2022, according to data released Thursday, less than a third of its losses in the previous year. And the easing of pandemic restrictions last year has paved the way for his 174% increase in immigrants from other countries finding new homes in the region.
The latest update comes after a massive population decline in 2021 threatened to upend everything from tax revenue to school enrollment. While we are currently seeing some easing in the Bay Area, the region is still far from its pre-pandemic booming population trends.
“We didn’t expect to see such a rapid recovery in some cities and urban areas. It’s not a full recovery from pre-pandemic, but it’s on the right track,” said the Brookings Institution. William Frey, a demographer at Brookings Metro, the metropolitan policy program in the United States, said Thursday.
One reason the Bay Area’s outflow is slowing is that fewer people left California for other states last year than they did the year before. In 2022, there will be a net reduction in internal migration of 122,000 people, a 36% decrease from her loss of 192,000 inhabitants in 2021.
But there is no denying it. High housing costs in the area are still driving the Bay Area’s population decline, said Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Research Institute.
“It’s much more that people who were supposed to leave in 2021 have left in waves,” he said.
Still, Bay Area residents continue to pack in cheaper states like Arizona and Texas, he said.
“Places that have seen population growth throughout the pandemic and last year are places that are considered relatively affordable housing markets,” Bellisario said.
That hasn’t stopped international immigrants from coming to California, who are playing a key role in stemming population decline.
In 2022, the Bay Area will receive 46,000 people from international migration to the region from other countries, compared to 17,000 in 2021.
“During Covid-19, the U.S. Consulate was virtually non-functional,” said Hasan Abdullah, president of Fremont-based American Visa Law Group. Many immigrants who have waited years to reach the Bay Area are finally getting visas.
“2022 was our best sales year ever.”
Still, he said population growth from India could slow as Silicon Valley tech companies cut jobs.
“People were like, ‘What am I going to do? I just got fired,'” Abdullah said. “We literally had four consultations this week.”
Vanessa Bohm, who works in the Family Assistance Division at the Central America Resource Center in San Francisco, said she’s also seeing an influx of asylum seekers seeking help with food and housing.
“We are definitely seeing more arrivals from Central America,” says Brohm. “It’s heartbreaking that the shelter system is overwhelmed and can’t connect people to emergency services like it used to.”
The influx of new immigrants to the Bay Area is reflected in California and across the country.
Counties centered around Seattle, Miami, and Dallas also experienced population growth due to new immigration flows.
Overall, California lost nearly 1% of its population between July 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021, and lost another 0.3% the following year. In the Bay Area, he saw an even more dramatic drop of 2.5% in the first year, and another 0.8% drop by 2022.
With the exception of Santa Cruz, all Greater Bay Area counties will have fewer residents in July 2022 than in the previous year.
Staff writer Ethan Varian and Associated Press contributed to this article.
