For years, a similar number of people moved out of San Francisco as into it. But that changed during the pandemic. Excluding moves from abroad, over 72,000 more people have moved out of the city than in since the beginning of 2020- a figure that is almost eight times higher than the same period in 2018-2019.
The Chronicle received an exclusive look at data on California migration patterns from the California Policy Lab, a research group based out of the University of California. The data, called the University of California Consumer Credit Panel, tracks movements of the approximately 90% of Californian adults with active credit information every quarter. It shows the number of Californians that have moved both within counties and to and from other states.
The data shows that during the pandemic, California had far higher levels of what’s called “negative net domestic migration” compared to the prior two years. That is, the number of Californians leaving the state for other parts of the country has increased, while the number of people moving into the state from the rest of the U.S. has decreased. Read more…