San Francisco’s population dipped again last year, a persistent post-pandemic trend that sets the city apart from California overall, whose population grew in 2024.
San Francisco lost an estimated 3,300 people from January 2024 to January 2025, according to data released this week by the California Department of Finance. That puts the city’s population at about 842,000 as of the beginning of the year — down by more than 31,000 people from the start of 2020.
The new data confirms that San Francisco’s population is shrinking once again, having also seen a population decline from 2023 to 2024. Like the rest of California, the city’s population plunged after the start of the pandemic. But unlike some of its fellow Bay Area counties — including Santa Clara, Alameda and Napa — San Francisco has not seen its trend start to reverse. Its population remains about 3.6% lower than it was in January 2020, while Santa Clara County’s population is down by less than 1%…