Sitting in a modest second-floor office, in a municipal building where the first floor was gutted by the storm, Mr. Yaokasin checked off the list of people he knows who have left. His cousin, a lawyer, now works for a large company in Manila. The secretary at his church took a job at a call center in Cebu, on another island 100 miles away.

Even students have left. More than a third of the 1,370 students at the University of the Philippines campus here have transferred to other campuses. An additional 130 dropped out, some because they could no longer afford to attend. Enrollment has dropped by a third at the 1,900-student ACLC College, which teaches mainly computer skills, but has been reduced to classroom lectures because its computers were destroyed in the storm.

The flight of those most able to find opportunities elsewhere is leaving behind a city of the poor, including those left destitute by the typhoon.

Almil Rama is a 35-year-old kindergarten teacher who lost her husband and house in the storm and now lives with her three children in a room rented from a friend.

The storm killed 22 of the kindergartners at her school, San Jose Elementary, and 94 students soon moved away with their families and have not come back. The school still has 137 kindergartners, but it lost its books and its ceiling fan in the storm. Even if the fan is replaced, there is no power to run it.

“We need electricity,” said Ms. Rama, who lights her rented room with candles.

Some aspects of life in Tacloban have improved since the storm hit on Nov. 8. Relief food and drinking water are available — though Ms. Rama said the cost of drinking water jugs had increased sixfold, absorbing a tenth of her salary. Residents say crime is low, despite the lifting of a curfew imposed in the desperate first days of lawlessness after the storm.