California population drops for first time
Less immigration, surge in deaths are key factors
SACRAMENTO — California’s population shrank slightly last year amid the coronavirus pandemic, the first time the state has measured an annual decline in more than a century of tracking.
The sharpest declines were mostly in coastal regions, the state Department of Finance found, while inland areas where more new singlefamily homes are being built defied the statewide trend and added people.
The department released estimates Friday concluding that California’s overall population decreased by 0.46% in 2020, a net loss of 182,083 people that officials attributed largely to a surge in deaths and a steep decline in immigration because of the pandemic.
The drop to the current population of 39,466,855 follows decades of slowing growth, as both the birth rate and migration to California have fallen. State demographers estimated an increase of only 0.2%, or 87,494 people, in 2019.
But H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance, said the state projected that the decline — the first since data collection began in 1900 — would be temporary.
“Our demographers anticipate we will return to slightly positive growth 12 months from now as the pandemic is brought under control and we see changes to immigration policy,” he said.
The population decline comes as California is already reeling with questions of identity and the political consequences of its plateauing growth.
Reports of residents leaving San Francisco and other cities during the pandemic led to months of debate over whether California was experiencing an exodus. Critics argued that the state had become inhospitable to all but the wealthiest households, though it turned out that most people were moving within California.
The U.S. Census Bureau also announced last week that California would lose a representative in Congress for the first time in the state’s history, after its population increased more slowly than the country as a whole during the past decade.
The fundamental issue is the availability of housing, said Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. Some communities have simply run out of space to expand, while others have made it harder to build.
Johnson published an analysis of census data this week that showed those moving to the state are generally wealthier, more highly educated and younger than those leaving — underscoring how soaring home prices and rents have created a financial barrier to living in California. In a survey of people who moved away, a quarter cited housing as the reason.
“I don’t see us ever going back to the period when we were gaining large numbers of people,” Johnson said.
The same factors are driving Californians inland, away from expensive coastal cities that have been the historic population centers. While every Bay Area county except Contra Costa lost residents last year, the neighboring counties of San Benito and San Joaquin had among the fastest growth in the state. The foothill region outside Sacramento also experienced significant gains.
San Francisco lost 1.7% of its residents last year, one of the steepest declines of any large city of California. But Oakland, which has become one of the hottest real estate markets in the state, bucked the trend, growing by 0.7%.
Despite a switch to remote work during the pandemic that accelerated movement out of cities, Leora Lawton, executive director of the Berkeley Population Center, said she expects their populations will stabilize in the long run. Cities provide a natural social network for young people just starting their careers, she said, and are an incubator for new businesses.
“Young adults need to be around other people to form friendships, to find partners, in order to find their sense of self,” said Lawton, who has studied the effects of social isolation. “People’s mental health is really suffering with this pandemic, and I just don’t think it’s going to be a permanent shift among younger workers.”
The Department of Finance pointed to two main factors for the state population decrease in 2020: California experienced about 51,000 excess deaths because of the coronavirus, 19% more than the average of the previous three years. And only an estimated 29,300 people moved to the state from other countries, a decline of nearly 123,000 from 2019. Much of that drop was due to international students’ inability to travel to university campuses because of pandemic restrictions.
Other longterm trends contributed. More Californians move to other states each year than Americans from other states move to California. That outflow has been steadily increasing for decades, to about 311,000 last year, according to the Department of Finance, and now eclipses net international immigration.
That leaves only natural population growth. But the birth rate has been falling, as it is across the country — and it took a dive during the pandemic, with about 24,000 fewer babies born last year than expected.
Palmer said state demographers anticipate California will benefit as the Biden administration begins to lift former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, such as restrictions on H1B visas and a lower refugee cap. California is home to a disproportionate number of highly skilled foreign workers, refugees and other immigrants.
“We are a destination state, by virtue of California being California,” Palmer said.