Bay Watch: Bay Area Population Falls for Third Straight Year

New data released this week by the California Department of Finance offers a first look at the region’s population in 2022. For the third straight year, the nine-county Bay Area lost population from 2021 to 2022, bringing the total population down to 7.56 million, a loss of over 200,000 people since the pandemic began. From 2020 to 2021, San Francisco experienced a loss of over 30,000 people, or nearly 4 percent of its population. In the second year of the pandemic, the biggest losers (relative to their 2021 population) were in the North Bay – with Marin and Napa counties losing 1.5 and 1.3 percent of their populations, respectively. San Francisco endured a smaller loss of 4,300 people, or 0.5 percent of its population.

For more data and analysis on the region’s declining population, what’s behind it and where people are going, please visit Bay Watch.