Will the last person to leave California please turn off the lights? Assuming they aren’t in the middle of one of California’s increasingly frequent brownouts, that is.
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Relocation firm moveBuddha looked at searches for 100,000 moves just this year, and five of the top ten were people looking to get out of the Golden State for almost anywhere else. “5 of the top 10 exit metros are in California, the firm reported on Monday. “Los Angeles has the highest interest in outbound moves, with 42% more outbound inquiries than runner-up San Francisco. Per capita, the prize goes to San Francisco.”
The Mercury News reported way back in 2012, “California was supposed to have about 40 million people by now, according to population projections made before the Great Recession, but a slowdown in births and immigration has forced the state’s demographers to push back that expected milestone by at least six years.”
Instead, Sacramento’s Department of Finance estimated that “Forty million people will live in California by the end of 2018 and 50 million by 2048.”
Even the revised prediction now looks quaint, after reading this report from Planetizen:
“The U.S. Census Bureau reported in March that California’s population as of last July had dropped to an estimated 38,965,000,” wrote George Skelton, Capitol Journal columnist for the Los Angeles Times on April 8. “That’s down by 75,400 in a year — and 573,000 below California’s peak of 39.5 million in 2020.”
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California — for the first time in the state’s long history of rapid population growth — lost a congressional seat in the 2020 reapportionment. The state could lose as many as five more in 2030.
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The state halted its decline last year, but just barely, gaining about 67,000 people, a barely noticeable 0.17% growth rate. But 114,200 legal immigrants came to California, which means the state still had a net loss of about 47,000 U.S. citizens to other states.
Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom is wasting time trying to blame California’s gas prices (among the highest in the nation) on Big Oil.
Then there’s this from a couple of weeks ago:
California and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) excessive, heavy-handed COVID-19 lockdowns may have broken a large share of the state’s youth, setting them back an incalculable amount.
In 2022, 10% of Californians aged 16-24 were considered “disconnected,” meaning they weren’t in school, employed, or even looking for a job. That amounts to around half a million young Californians. Public school enrollment is still declining, and it isn’t being matched by the smaller increase in private schools. And, of the students who are enrolled, 25%, about 4 million, are considered “chronically absent,” meaning they miss at least 10% of school days.
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I hit U-Haul’s website to price the 26-foot truck a family would need to move a three- or four-bedroom house from one city to another. Tech workers leaving the Bay Area often end up in Austin, Tex., so that’s the route I priced. U-Haul charges $5,040 for the trip east. But if you’re a brave and/or confused soul looking to move from Austin to San Francisco, that same 26-foot truck will set you back just $2,514.
People will pay big bucks to leave California because it’s worth it.