The "myth" endures.
California Population Loss Accelerated During Pandemic
Excerpted....
California is losing more than twice as many people to domestic migration as it was before the pandemic, a new report from University of California researchers shows.
The research released Wednesday shows the change is largely being driven by a drop in the number of people moving to California from other parts of the U.S. and is most acute in the high-cost San Francisco Bay Area.
The researchers examined anonymized credit bureau data and found that the downward trend in net domestic migration has been accelerated by a 38% decrease in the number of new arrivals between March 2020 and September of this year. The number of new arrivals declined in all of the state’s 58 counties.
“Entrances have been really stable over time, but they did dip pretty substantially since the pandemic,” said Natalie Holmes, a UC Berkeley doctoral student and one of the authors of the report from the nonpartisan California Policy Lab.
Meanwhile, the number of Californians leaving has increased by 12%, a return to pre-pandemic trends. In total, 150,000 more people on average left California than entered in the third quarter of 2021, compared with 60,000 net exits in the first three months of 2020. The actual volume of the flows is likely even bigger, Ms. Holmes said, since the analysis relies on credit data and is less representative of younger and lower-income residents.
The report didn’t explore why fewer people are coming to the state than before. Previous research has suggested housing costs and affordability are key factors. Many
Americans re-evaluated where to live during the pandemic as businesses closed and larger numbers of people were able to work remotely.
An analysis published in May by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California showed that people who move to California tend to have higher incomes and higher education levels than those who move out.
California has been losing more people to other states than it gains for years, census data and state estimates show. Last year, its
population decreased for the first time in recorded history. In another first, California will lose a congressional seat in the once-a-decade redistricting process now under way.
The shift is especially large in and around San Francisco. The number of new arrivals to the Bay Area plummeted 45% between March 2020 and September 2021, while exits increased by 21%.
Between 2016 and the first quarter of 2020, the three Bay Area counties of San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara were the only ones statewide to see more people move in from other states than leave. But that trend reversed during the pandemic, with all three losing population through domestic migration.
The median sale price for existing single-family homes in the Bay Area was $1,275,000 in October according to data from the California Association of Realtors, one of the highest in the nation.
but your epithet for California is borrowed from the conservatives. Not sure if you know that.