Silicon Valley last year shrank at a level not seen since the dot-com bust, the second consecutive year that a record number of residents departed and the fourth straight year of population declines, according to an annual report. A net total of 47,800 residents moved out of the region from July 2021 through June 2022, just shy of the record number of 48,300 who moved out in 2001 after the tech bust. That’s according to the Silicon Valley Index, an annual look at the health of the region.
“Yes, there’s an exodus,” Russell Hancock, chief executive of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, said in a news briefing Tuesday about his group’s latest report. “It’s happening.” Also read: These 8 billionaires have more combined wealth than half of Silicon Valley’s residents Amid reports of an exodus earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Silicon Valley Index did not show a population decline in 2020. With more data, though, there is now a clearer picture of the region’s population declines, especially as they relate to the effects of the pandemic. The effects of COVID-19 raised death rates in the region, with more than 3,300 Silicon Valley residents’ deaths caused by COVID-19 last year. But it also changed the nature of work, including where that work can be done, which allowed residents to move away from a high-priced region — with the majority staying in California but moving to other places in the Bay Area or more affo …