Silicon Valley residents left in droves amid pandemic — which isn’t all bad

TENS OF THOUSANDS of people left Silicon Valley during the COVID-19 pandemic, but local housing and economics experts aren’t too worried about the mass exodus.

The metro area encompassing San Jose, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale lost nearly 43,000 people between April 2020 and July 2021, according to recently released census data. That’s almost eight times more than the year before the start of the pandemic when the region lost roughly 5,400 residents.