The Demographics of San Francisco’s Pandemic Urban Exodus

The early months of the pandemic were rife with stories about urban dwellers decamping to more suburban and rural climes, reinvigorating real estate markets around the country, sending waves of new residents to small towns, and driving up housing costs in so-called "zoom towns." Though a number of studies have been released in the ensuing years revealing the reality of out-migration to be much more complicated than of the headline-friendly version of the Covid-19 “urban exodus.”

Some cities did lose population, however, including San Francisco, which lost a decade’s worth of population growth in a year [paywall]. According to a paywalled article by Susie Neilson in the San Francisco Chronicle, detailed data from the U.S. Census Bureau now makes it possible to get very specific about the demographics of the city’s population loss.

Quoting the headline of the story, here’s the “exact type of person who was most likely to leave San Francisco in the pandemic”: white and young.

“The data shows that young people in general were more likely to leave the city. The city lost about 20% of all residents age 25 to 29 over this time and 15% of those 20 to 24,” according to Nielson.

“These findings make intuitive sense. People in their twenties and early thirties in San Francisco are far less likely to own homes than older adults, making it both harder to afford the city and easier to leave it,” adds Nielson.

The article includes an infographic laying out the population trends by race and age cohort between April 2020 and July 2021. At the other end of the spectrum, moving into the city, are white and Asian people over the age of 70.