A rebound in legal immigration and other factors fueled the state’s first population increase since 2019.
California still lost more residents to other states than it gained from them — as has been the case for two decades — but the number of people leaving for other parts of the country fell to pre-pandemic levels. California began to shrink in 2020 due to pandemic deaths, federal immigration restrictions and declining birth rates. It was the first time the state lost population since it began recording the numbers in 1900.
“Individuals were newly freed from the office in California” in 2021 and 2022, Walter Schwarm, a demographer for the Department of Finance, said in an interview. “Some people temporarily moved places and now are back because their employer wants them to be around a little more often.”at the onset of the pandemic. Legal immigration processing has since sped up, counteracting declining birth rates and movement out of the state that have chipped away at the state’s population gains. .
Such construction should have put downward pressure on prices, “which certainly helps affordability,” said Schwarm, and that may have helped urban areas stem population losses.