The Bay Area is growing again.
Every county in the region saw an increase in population last year, a resounding reversal after a drop in population at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic that had some economists worried about an enduring exodus.
Santa Clara County — a hub for the emerging artificial intelligence industry — grew the most, by 1.5%, from around 1,897,000 on July 1, 2023, to about 1,926,00 on July 1, 2024, according to population estimates released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Still, most Bay Area counties are home to fewer people now than before COVID-19 hit.
The region has 91,000 fewer residents than the high of 6,409,000 in July 2020. But there were an estimated 68,000 more residents, a 1.08% increase, from 2023 to 2024. Contra Costa now has 6,400 more residents than it did in 2020, the previous high for the county.
“We’re still in a funny in-between place,” said Russell Hancock, president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a nonprofit think tank. “We don’t know where we’re going yet. There are new forces acting on the Valley. AI is poised for lift-off, but we can’t quite figure out what that means.”
Every year the bureau releases population estimates for counties and metropolitan areas, and every year the estimates for each year since the last decennial census count are adjusted. While last year’s update showed that San Francisco was the first in the Bay Area to see a year-over-year increase since the pandemic, the bureau adjusts the estimates each year based on new information, and data on births, deaths and migration.
This year’s update shows that the pandemic-triggered exodus was less dramatic, and shorter, than previous estimates suggested. Now, the new estimates show that 2024 was actually the second year of growth for the Bay Area since the pandemic: Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties all saw larger populations in July 2024 than the year before.
And every Bay Area county outperformed the state’s 0.59% population increase from 2023 to 2024. The smallest increase locally was in Alameda County, which had a 0.67% increase from the previous year, followed by Contra Costa at 0.9%, and San Francisco at 1.02%. San Mateo County saw a 1.17% increase and Santa Clara County had the largest with 1.54% more residents.
“This trend of people seemingly coming back is obviously a good one, and one that’s not so surprising,” said Jeff Bellisario, the executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. He cited the combination of return-to-office directives “and the growth of the artificial intelligence industry, in particular.”
Some of the increase in Santa Clara County has been driven by foreign workers. A recent Silicon Valley Index, a report produced by Hancock’s think tank, found that two-thirds of tech workers in the Valley are foreign-born.
“We cratered during the first Trump administration, and during the Biden four years, a different tone was struck, and there was a return influx. Who knows what will happen next – that’s unstable,” Hancock said of the foreign-born population.
Contra Costa County’s population stability and growth since 2020 could be explained by its more affordable housing.
The median price of a home there as of January was a relatively modest by Bay Area standards — $785,000. Across the bay in San Mateo County, the median price is $1.96 million — more than twice as much.
“Especially on the edges of Contra Costa County — like Pittsburg and Clayton, you can find more affordable housing that still allows you to commute into San Francisco,” said Tina Frechman, a real estate agent based in Lafayette.
The advent of remote work may have also allowed more people to consider moving out to some of the more distant parts of Contra Costa County, Frechman said.
According to the bureau, the Bay Area is among the vast majority of metropolitan areas in the country — 90% — that saw growth from 2023 to 2024. Population growth in metro areas was faster in 2024, and the country’s metro areas grew slightly faster than the nation as a whole. Many metro areas that saw pandemic-era drops in population have returned to year-over-year growth.
“One way of characterizing the last year or two is there is some normalization happening after we had two or three years of pandemic and remote-work related shocks,” Bellisario said.
Ethan Varian and Kate Talerico contributed reporting.