Record number of San Franciscans fleeing to Texas, Florida: Report

Record numbers of San Francisco residents have fled the city in favor of Texas and Florida since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic last year, Business Insider reports.

The rate at which residents are fleeing the city in 2020 doubled in comparison to 2019. Last year, 18 of every 1,000 San Francisco residents had left the city, nearly two percent of the population. A year earlier, that number was just nine of every 1,000 residents.

Most resident leaving San Francisco moved to other parts of California, which was also the case in previous years. Sacramento, the state capital, has become particularly popular for movers, with San Francisco experiencing a 70 percent increase in residents moving to the city.

The number of residents fleeing to both Florida and Texas increased by over 32 and 46 percent respectively, a massive increase from previous years.

The Dallas-based CBRE group conducted the study to determine how the ongoing coronavirus pandemic affected migration patterns in the United States.

The data comes as many high-profile figures have announced their moves to other states, citing the overbearing regulatory climate experienced in California, both in general and specifically related to the pandemic.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and podcaster Joe Rogan moved from California to Texas last year, with Musk having been based in the Bay area originally. Unicorn investor Keith Rabois, on the other hand, moved from the Bay area to Miami, Florida.

"Many of the most ambitious people on the planet have lived here," Rabois explained, "but post-COVID, I think the concentration of talent has atrophied, perhaps permanently."

"The pandemic came just as the bulk of the large and increasingly affluent millennial cohort had reached prime family formation age," the CBRE report explains. "Consequently, millennials had been trending toward more suburban residencies even before COVID-19 came on the scene."

California has the highest level of domestic out-migration in the United States. In 2012, more than 73,000 Californians left the state, a number which increased by more than 100,000 annually by 2019. As a result, California experienced its lowest population growth rate ever in the 2010s, with decade-after-decade population growth dropping below 10 percent for the first time.