Fresh Off Losing a House Seat, California Reports Population Decline for the First Time Ever
California’s population fell by more than 182,000 people in 2020, marking the first yearly decline ever recorded for the nation’s most populous state.
State officials announced Friday that California’s population dipped 0.46 percent to just under 39.5 million people from January 2020 to January 2021.
The news comes one week after the U.S. Census Bureau announced paltry population growth for California, resulting in the state losing a congressional seat for the first time because it grew more slowly than other states over the past decade.
But the census numbers reflect the state’s population in April 2020. The new state numbers released Friday reflect the state’s population as of January 2021.
The state’s four most populated cities — Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco — lost a combined 88,000 people.
LA lost the most — nearly 52,000 — and has now shed about 75,000 people in the last three years to fall to an overall population of just over 3.9 million.
California became a state in 1850 on the heels of a legendary gold rush. Its population soared following World War II with the help of a robust defense and aerospace industry. It boomed again in the 1980s and 1990s as technology companies put Silicon Valley on the map.
But the growth slowed in the 1990s and again in the years before the Great Recession in the late 2000s.
State officials say California has seen more people leave than move in from other states for much of the last three decades. However, that had been offset by international immigration and births so that California continued to grow.
That changed in 2020. State officials say a declining birth rate, plus reductions in international immigration and an increase in deaths, led to the state’s first year-over-year population loss.
California saw negative international migration in 2020, which state officials say was a direct result of the Trump administration’s decision to stop issuing new visas for much of the year. Coronavirus restrictions around the world also caused about a 29 percent decline in international students coming to California.
About 51,000 people died from COVID-19 in California last year, contributing to a death rate 19 percent higher than the state’s average for the past three years. In all, 51 of the state’s 58 counties posted death rates above the three-year average — including 12 that had increases of 20 percent or more.
“As the pandemic recedes and with changes in federal immigration policy, we expect to return to more normal immigration trends into California from other countries,” said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the Department of Finance.
“All of which means that by the time we do this same projection 12 months from now, we expect that 2021 will show a return to a slightly positive growth rate.”
The state’s population has become a political issue this year in light of the effort to recall Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, with some blaming high taxes and the governor’s progressive policies for people fleeing the state.
From 2010 to 2020, about 6.1 million people left California for other states compared to about 4.9 million people who moved to California from other states, according to an analysis of census data by the Public Policy Institute of California.
The Department of Finances population estimate comes from a number of sources, including birth and death counts, the number of new driver’s licenses and address changes, school enrollments and federal tax returns.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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