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When the US Census Bureau recently revealed a slight increase in California’s population, it came as a welcome sign that the state is growing again. This data showed slightly reduced levels of migration.
That’s good news, isn’t it? Unfortunately, it’s not enough.
Last year’s count still remains the number of states that stood in 2020, with its growth rate below the national average and far below the state of its major competitors. Comparing the census numbers from 2010 to 2024, California’s population has grown by less than 6%. In Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia and Utah, the increase ranges from 15% to nearly 30%.
And the prognosis for future growth in California is not good. The majority of recent increases appear to have been the result of a historic spike in immigration during the Biden era. Under President Trump, the doors for many foreign-born newcomers are closed.
Some businesses and immigrant supporters are taking Trump’s actions, but it’s not as if the majority of immigrants are always a positive. The Congressional Budget Office in 2024 pointed out that US immigration is increasingly favoring the economy as a whole, but the current rookies appear to come from poor countries.
In California’s poor state, a slight decline in evictions last year has not come close to revising decades of exodus.
The numbers tell the story. Between 2020 and 2024, the state added 934,000 international migrants compared to net domestic migrant losses of 1.46 million residents. Migration in California now resembles a long pattern associated with rusty belt conditions. Over the past 24 years, more than 4 million net domestic immigrants, with a population roughly the same as the Seattle metropolitan area, have moved from California to the rest of the country.
The state planners have not seen a conversion offshore either. In 2007, demographers predicted that California’s population would increase from 36.5 million to 60 million by 2050. But today, the forecast for 2050 is only 40 million Californians.
People are leaving or not coming to California for reasonable reasons. And most of them are economical. A 2020 study showed that minorities, including Asian, Latino and Black, generally enjoy higher real income and home ownership in cities in the southern or central areas than in cities on the East or West Coast. These groups flock to Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, or Miami, not California for opportunities. Given the influx of immigrants to California, the population of some foreign-born cities in Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Tennessee is growing faster than in San Francisco, with the number of foreign-borns in LA falling.
A long beacon for young and ambitious people, today, California is along the bottom to attract all newcomers from other parts of the country. Rather, many wealthy young professionals have migrated from the state. In 2022, California lost more than 200,000 net immigrants over the age of 25, with the majority of them earning four years or associate degrees, but the number of cohorts skyrocketed in Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Florida and Carolina.
A recent survey has identified five best regions for young job seekers. Four of the five were in the south. Many young people choose regions where family formation is higher, such as Utah, Texas and again Southern states, thinking about their future lives. Between 2008 and 2022, California’s birth rate (the number of children a woman experiences over her lifetime) fell from 17th to the 40th highest in the nation.
This suggests that California competitors will continue to add workers faster in the future than Golden State. California still has the most foreign-born residents in the United States and is dominant in the wealthy aspect, including retirees, but even this demographic group is on the way. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported on 2022 IRS data, with wealthy immigrants taking almost $24 billion from California, parallel losses in states such as New York, Illinois and New Jersey.
For Angelenos, who is caught up in highway traffic from bumper to bumper every day, the outlook for a declining population may seem attractive. However, details of the decline in population and who will leave suggest that the nation will face a dangerous deficit in the Rhine. Young and energetic residents and their children will not have a bright future. As John Maynard Keynes said of the overpopulation challenge, “If we’re careless, it could help us lose another still intense, more unruly thing.”
California already has a significant shortage of skilled workers that are expected to get worse. Companies do not invest in places that are not readily accessible to workers.
The nation must address the reasons for its faded attraction. Security and wealth creation machines for its public are stagnant, primarily due to housing costs. In addition to that increase, it appears that economic opportunities are reduced and long-term stagnation is guaranteed.
They are not given the youthful energy that has made the nation a most notable region on the planet. It’s time to stop and read the data and figure out how to restore the promises of the once Golden State.
Joel Cotkin is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and a senior researcher at the University of Texas Civitas Institute in Austin.
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