The Bay Area has experienced fluctuating population patterns over the last four years, as the pandemic, a shifting tech industry and ongoing affordability challenges change the region. But new data is showing that international immigration is actually one of the biggest forces shaping the Bay Area’s demographic landscape.
According to the Census Bureau, international migration “accounted for nearly 2.7 million of the total population gain in U.S. metro areas” between 2023 and 2024, up from 2.2 million the previous year. “Increasingly, population growth in metro areas is being shaped by international migration,” Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, said in a news release Thursday. Wilder went on to say that even as births continue to add to overall population growth, international migration is increasingly compensating for domestic outflow in many areas.
That trend is particularly evident in the South Bay, where foreign-born workers now constitute a historic share of the workforce. According to Joint Venture Silicon Valley’s 2025 Silicon Valley Index , which analyzes the region’s economic and demographic trends, 41% of Silicon Valley’s population in 2023 was foreign-born, the highest in history. Among employed residents, that number rose to 48%, and it rose to 66% in tech, “where 70% of tech workers are Indian or Chinese, and 73 percent of female tech workers are foreign-born,” the report said…