The Golden Age of the Golden State is long over:
California’s population fell by more than 182,000 last year, the first yearly loss ever recorded for the nation’s most populous state. The decline halted a growth streak dating to its founding in 1850 on the heels of a gold rush that prompted a flood of people to seek their fortune in the West.
The figures released Friday followed last week’s announcement from the U.S. Census Bureau that California would lose a congressional seat for the first time because it grew more slowly than other states over the past decade. Still, California’s population of just under 39.5 million and soon-to-be 52-member congressional delegation remain by far the largest.
California’s population has surged and slowed in the decades since its founding, with notable increases following World War II and the tech boom of the 1980s and ’90s that put Silicon Valley on the map.
In recent years, more people have left California for other states than have moved there, a trend Republicans say is a result of the state’s high taxes and progressive politics. The average sale price of a single-family home in California hit a record $758,990 in March, a 23.9{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} increase from a year ago.
“The numbers don’t lie. People are leaving our state because it’s not affordable to live here,” tweeted Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego and one of the Republican candidates hoping to unseat Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in this year’s expected recall election.
But the Newsom administration says California’s population decline is an outlier, blaming it on the coronavirus pandemic that turned everything upside down in 2020. In a normal year, California might have between 140,000 and 150,000 people move in from other countries. In 2020, it was just 29,000 people — a direct impact, state officials say, of the Trump administration halting new visas for much of the year.
It’s a good test for how magic the dirt of California is. I, for one, tend to suspect that no one will be wishing they could all be California girls in 2050.