One of the reasons for California’s declining population is that people can work from other states where housing costs are lower. (Illustration by Jeff Durham/Bay Area News Group)

The topline numbers were eye-popping: 725,000 people Leave California in 2020 and start a new life in one of the other 49 states or in Washington, D.C.

If this were the end of the story, the numbers (derived from the Internal Revenue Service’s 2021 immigration data) would represent the largest single-year exodus in state history.

But it didn’t end there. California’s population has been steadily declining since 2020, although experts say the reason is more subtle than a single year’s total outflow. According to recent state data, California’s population has fallen from 40 million just four years ago to just under 39 million today.

Lots of other new data shows where people are headed (Texas, Idaho, Florida, and neighboring Arizona and Nevada). Opinion poll reports show who will retire (high-income, well-educated workers are now joining a migration pattern historically dominated by low-income workers). Yet another data shows that at least some of the financial and social challenges causing problems in California (rising house prices, stagnant wages, crime) are not that different even in the state with the most California ex-citizens. indicates that there is no

“I didn’t think I’d miss it. And in many ways, I was right. I’m not,” said Debbie, who moved from Burbank to Boise, Idaho, last year with her husband and three children. Higby said with a laugh.

“But I’m not one of those people who hates California,” she added. “It’s all really incomprehensible.

“For me, it’s fine there. Things aren’t perfect here either. Both places have their pros and cons.”

Blip or trend?

The outflow of 725,000 is a high-end figure, not a net figure. But California’s actual internal immigration in 2020 lost about 331,000 more people to the state than those returning from other states, making it a boon to those who follow the situation closely. I thought it was going to be tight.

“Yeah, it’s big,” said political scientist Eric Magee, a senior fellow at the California Public Policy Institute and co-author of a blog on state politics, demographics, and other issues related to California’s population. He said.

But McGee, like others studying California, was quick to add: For at least the past 30 years, California has exported more people to other states than it has imported. ”

In fact, McGee’s blog tracked last year’s monthly data and found that from July 2021 to July 2022, California lost about 407,000 people to other states, and this is arguably the biggest change in state history.

“We’ve had some years in the last few decades where we’ve had net gains, but the typical result is losing people,” McGee said.

But more people from all over the world move to California each year than to places like Texas or Idaho, and it’s also typical for domestic outflows to be offset by international inflows. In 2020 that was not the case.

And for most of the year, state residents weren’t shocked by the pandemic’s rise in deaths and the associated drop in births. And thousands of employers across the state each year impose massive layoffs in a relatively short period of time, then rehire at a breakneck pace, eventually ending up with millions of workers anywhere in their homes. never decided to let workers work from home. Might be so. All of this happened in the first year of the pandemic.

The bottom line: California’s population in 2020 not only grew more slowly than before, it actually decreased by nearly 359,000. The same thing happened in 2021, with California’s population down by 114,000.

The pandemic has since ended, but California’s declining population has not.

The contraction continued last year, with about 139,000 deaths in the state, according to California Treasury Department data released this month. State officials now estimate California’s population at about 38,940,231, falling below 39 million for the first time since 2015.