This CA Suburb Is Shrinking Faster Than Any Other City In The State: Report

UNION CITY, CA — Union City’s population dropped 6.9 percent from 2020 to 2025, marking the steepest decline of any city in California with more than 50,000 residents, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The community of just over 65,000, which the newspaper described as “a bellwether for the Bay Area’s pandemic-spurred population loss,” appears to be losing young families and gaining empty nesters and tech workers without children, the Chronicle reported.

Subscribe

The rise in remote work has allowed families to move further from the Bay Area’s center, and Union City schools, which are average in math and below-average for English per the California School Dashboard, are a concern, according to the Chronicle.

Union City is about 20 years into a $500 million, 470-acre mixed-use development that will bring thousands of homes and jobs, and hopefully offset the city’s shrinking household size, which is the lowest it’s been on average since the early 1990s, the newspaper reported. But the project remains years from completion, according to the Chronicle.

“We are a city that has limited land,” City Manager Joan Malloy told the newspaper. “You’re seeing places like the Tri-Valley continue to grow because they have more land within their city limits.”

Ben Metcalf, however, managing director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, described Union City's plight as "a perfect storm that’s regional in nature.”

Read more from the Chronicle.