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United States

California's Population Dropped Again, Census Data Shows (sfchronicle.com) 222

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The number of people living in California fell below 39 million this year, according to new census estimates, the lowest count since 2015. From a report: California's population dipped by about 75,000 from 2022 to 2023, estimates released Tuesday by the Census Bureau shows, with about 38,965,000 million people in the state this year. The state's population has fallen since its 2019 peak of 39.5 million, though the annual loss has also slowed each year. Between 2021 and 2022, California lost a net of about 104,000 people, or 0.3%, higher than the dip of 0.2% between 2022 and 2023.

About 338,000 more people left California for other states than vice versa from July 2022 to July 2023, the Census Bureau data shows. That's slightly greater than the 333,000 from 2021 to 2022, and the most of any state. California historically loses more people to the rest of the country than it gains. The state partially offset its domestic loss via international migration, with a net of 151,000 people moving to California from outside the United States. That was the second-highest number of any state, behind Florida, and a 19% increase from 2021-22. And it was the highest total for California since 2015.
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California's Population Dropped Again, Census Data Shows More

California's Population Dropped Again, Census Data Shows

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  • This might be the answer... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Monday December 25, 2023 @04:14PM (#64105083)

    ...to the so-called "housing crisis", where pundits claim that we need to keep building in order to keep up with endless growth.
    Endless growth is impossible.
    We need steady-state sustainability

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 )

      People rather be homeless in California than live in a house in some other state.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by NoWayNoShapeNoForm ( 7060585 )

        People rather be homeless in California than live in a house in some other state.

        The open availability of drugs in California; the generous State-funded "social programs" (welfare payouts & public health services, and so on); the lack of criminal enforcement for thefts under $950 USD combined with a "slap on the hand" legal system in the liberal coastal communities; and THE NICE WEATHER (most of the time).

        Yeah, why would any homeless want to move out of California and give up all of those nice benefits?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      People need to live somewhere, and the population is increasing, so new housing is needed. Problem is that here in Austin, there are plenty of apartments, but with tremendous vacancy rates because people can't afford to pay $4000 for a 1/1, and have to fight for their lease when it expires in an auction. Yes, there are property taxes, but most of these places are owned by companies which can afford the taxes, because it is more important to take homes out of the real estate market for good which artificia

      • If there were really that many vacancies the rent would come down. At $4,000 per month, dropping rent $200 to fill on a two year lease covers one month where a unit is empty. Existing owners obviously want to protect the value of their investment, but you can't have massive vacancies and raising rents at the same time. That doesn't happen.

        • I think it can.

          • The laws of supply and demand aren't quite as ironclad as those of thermodynamics, but I suspect you'd be hard pressed to identify other cases where an abundance of supply relative to demand has resulted in higher prices.

      • population is increasing

        You're talking about California? It's decreasing there.

      • ...there are plenty of apartments, but with tremendous vacancy rates because people can't afford to pay $4000...

        This sounds like the old Yogi-ism: "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded..."

      • Taxes have to be paid. Yes, it is cheaper to leave a house empty and declare bankruptcy than to rent it below the actual cost, it costs money for people to live in a property. You identified the correct issue, taxes make it unaffordable to live, so lower taxes, donâ(TM)t expect companies (mostly small and individually owned businesses) to make a loss. In California or New York a small home is over $8000/year in school, property and other taxes, thatâ(TM)s nearly $700/month that goes straight towar

    • You don't need endless growth, just new units to keep up with population increases. Population growth is not endless and slows down or reverses when there is prosperity, access to birth control, and freedom from religious indoctrination. And btw, the Earth can easily sustain many times its current number of humans. And even more than that if people make slight sociological changes.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 )
      Completely wrong. The problem in California is that it is almost impossible to build new housing, which is drastically driving up the cost of housing and making other people not want to move there. I had a job offer in California a few years ago which would have paid about 150% of my then salary, but when we calculated the housing cost, it still didn't make sense. And yes, this really is about the lack of building housing. Take for example San Francisco. It has a population density of around 19,000 per a s

      • "Completely wrong" is completely wrong in response to 'eternal growth with finite resources is impossible'.

        • No, the response is in regards to the specific issue of housing right now. That very long term infinite population growth is impossible is true but not remotely relevant at the population levels in places like California.

      • Re:This might be the answer... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Monday December 25, 2023 @04:57PM (#64105135)

        Maybe the people living in California simply have different goals than trying to achieve the population density of Manhattan.

        • But many many people in California want to have more housing and want to live there. The problem is that the current setup makes it possible for a tiny part of the population to functionally block everyone else from building things. And there's a vast gulf in density. Again, the supposedly dense areas have a density that is a quarter of that of Manhattan. Even if you don't want to live in Manhattan, there's a massive amount of room there.

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by Waffle Iron ( 339739 )

            The problem is that the current setup makes it possible for a tiny part of the population to functionally block everyone else from building things.

            Funny how that works. I'd really like to build my house in the front yard of the Graceland mansion, but just a couple of Evis' heirs are blocking me, as well.

            At any rate, all these stories remind me of what Yogi Berra said: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              There's a world of difference between blocking people building in your literal back yard, and blocking new developments nearby, or then offshore turbines that aren't visible from the shore.

          • The idea of living on the 50th floor of a skyscraper isn't as appealing when you're in earthquake country though.

      • Re:This might be the answer... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Cyberax ( 705495 ) on Monday December 25, 2023 @07:08PM (#64105313)

        Completely wrong. The problem in California is that it is almost impossible to build new housing

        Bullshit. You can build new housing easily in Sacramento, Bakersfield, and so on. It's difficult to _densify_ areas, but building new housing is not a problem.

        And that's great. Density is toxic, and we'll have to deconstruct it eventually. So it's great that California is at least not digging in deeper into that quagmire.

        • Density is toxic

          US large metro areas are responsible for the lions share of economic output. You can like your rural life but you have to accept cities and human density are sort of the entire structure of human civilization...

          https://www.visualcapitalist.c... [visualcapitalist.com].

        • Re:This might be the answer... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Whatever Fits ( 262060 ) on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @10:58AM (#64106315) Homepage Journal

          Typing from Downtown Sacramento, I call bullshit on your bullshit call. The city here, out of pure benevolence, opted to reduce the fees to build new low income housing by $50,000 per unit. That is just the city's fees, not to mention county and state and that was $50k! It is nearly impossible to build affordable housing. Not the loaded term of affordable housing meaning subsidized housing, but starter homes and small homes for people without extremely large budgets. Those are impossible to build due to the above mentioned fees plus restrictive housing regulations that cause the price of a house to escalate so high that only large McMansions can be built because there is no margin for profit otherwise.

          The only affordable housing being built is rental apartments. Obviously you haven't seen the "densifying" going on here. I can walk to a dozen large scale apartment building projects. One place in which I used to rent tore down about half of the 60+ year old section of the complex (four square city block complex right downtown) and has replaced that with new, even higher density housing. I just checked the rent. $2000 per month for a 500 square foot studio. $3000 if you want bedrooms. It is a building frenzy downtown here, yes, but only high rent apartments.There is nothing being built for home ownership in all of the downtown region.

          Most of the construction for new housing is quite a distance away from the jobs and it is for houses that are generally around 3000 square feet and very expensive. I did find some brand new construction with 2000 square foot houses for just under $600,000 being built right next to the airport and the Amazon warehouses.

          This is not the American dream. Home ownership is a huge part of the climb up the ladder of success and has now been made extremely difficult for especially first time home buyers and is one of the biggest reasons why people are fleeing the state. Almost all of my friends that I grew up with and through college have left the state simply because it is so unaffordable.

          Also, Bakersfield??? Really? You only move to Bakersfield for agriculture or oil. It isn't one of those places that people want to settle in but have to.

          I was born in the city of Sacramento. I've never lived outside of 75 miles from where I was born. I'm leaving the state this coming year too. It no longer makes sense to stay.

      • Re:This might be the answer... (Score:5, Informative)

        by superdave80 ( 1226592 ) on Monday December 25, 2023 @07:59PM (#64105391)

        The problem in California is that it is almost impossible to build new housing

        I've lived my whole life in California, and everywhere I've lived I've seen new housing being built constantly all the time.

        • Re:This might be the answer... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday December 26, 2023 @10:19AM (#64106249) Homepage Journal

          I've lived all but a couple years of my life in California, and I've seen more housing destroyed than built in most areas.

          In addition the available supply has been bought up by investment firms (80% of starter homes) and by airbnbers borrowing against their first home to buy a second (third, fourth, etc) and then immediately airbnbing it.

          Some of these people are now trying to turn their airbnbs into rentals so they can be slumlords instead of operators of unlicensed hotels. You can recognize them easily because they are fully furnished with cheap shitty furniture and grossly overpriced even given prevailing rents. The economy as measured by how much money average people have to dispose of is doing absolutely shit, whatever the GDP might be doing being wholly irrelevant to the men at the coal-face who have to live with the fact that trickle down doesn't exist. And that's why you're seeing the airbnbs turning back into rentals, people can't afford to take trips.

          If you want to understand the housing situation in California, you need to remember that thousands of homes have been destroyed in the last few years, and after a disaster less than 25% of homes are rebuilt. People can't get financing, can't get insurance, can't find builders, rents are too high for more laborers to move into the area. I live in Rio Dell and something like 90% of the homes which were condemned due to the Quake are still standing empty. Habitat for Humanity was giving away repairs, but first you had to get two quotes for the work from contractors, and many people found that impossible. You literally could not get a quote because there were no contractors willing to do one, even for money. Similar forces were at work in Paradise, and in Lake County before that (where I also lived.)

      • Completely wrong. The problem in California is that it is almost impossible to build new housing,

        My city in the SF Bay Area has added thousands of new housing units in the last couple of years, with more on the way. The state has made if difficult for cities to block building new housing.

      • maybe more seniors should take in a tenant [apartmentlist.com]. It might help alleviate loneliness too.

    • ... and we need more houses to achieve steady state stability. We aren't there yet.

  • Still, because the representatives are based from population, the figures should be double checked.
  • Seriously reign in your landlords and/or raise minimum wage to something people can live on already.

    • Re:It's too conservative (Score:4, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Monday December 25, 2023 @05:57PM (#64105229)
      Rent controls make housing availability worse and the real minimum wage is $0, which is what people earn when you make it illegal for a business to pay them anything below the mandated price floor which may be above the value a person can provide. Feel good solutions to problems rarely do much in the way of addressing them.

      • Hold on. If the minimum wage is above the value a person can provide, but the minimum wage is significantly below a living wage, then the problem is not the minimum wage. It is some other problem. Is there an economist in the room who can sort this out for us?

        • Economists are slowly wiping the egg off their face as a result of the failure of several states increase in minimum wage to result in any loss of jobs. What seems to have happened is that the all the employers in a lot of areas have been informally keeping wages down for the least skilled, so when the minimum wage was raised, the change merely cut their excess profits. This has been most significantly noticed where Amazon has a dominant position in the local economy...

          With that cautionary tale in mind, I'l

          • Ultimate employees are worth as close to zero as companies can manage. We had a civil war over this, because, among other things, business didn't want to pay for labor. Regulation and unions are the only effective upward pressure on wages.

          • Re:Tricky, very tricky (Score:4, Insightful)

            by NomDeAlias ( 10449224 ) on Monday December 25, 2023 @09:01PM (#64105485)
            If your business requires people at rates that can't provide a living for the workers then your business likely doesn't need to exist. If it is a business that people require it will be able to charge prices to pay for labor.

          • Economists are slowly wiping the egg off their face as a result of the failure of several states increase in minimum wage to result in any loss of jobs.

            Which economists? Fresh water? Salt water? Austrian? They'd all have different takes. My personal view was short term increase of money supply followed by a long-term mix of two outcomes: A rise in prices (inflation) to include an increased cost of living, reduced job growth as automation is gradually phased in.

            Inflation? Check. Cost of living increase? Check. Push towards more automation even in places where there wasn't much effort prior? Check. For example, McDonald's order kiosks didn't result in layoff

        • If you believe that there are all of these perfectly productive people who ought to be earning some wage, my only question is why you are t employing them. There are far too many people who seem to have no problem in demanding how everyone else should be spending their money to do something which they themselves would not do with their own. Were you forced to pay those people you'd quickly discover that their labor is not productive entropy justify the wage you require.

          Similarly if you set an artificial

      • Rent controls make housing availability worse ...

        The flaw of price control is the very reason why sweat and time (labour) is price-controlled. Yes, price control means the landlord cannot demand the true cost of owning the building, causing living conditions to worsen. There are reasons for rent-control similar to reasons for a minimum wage.

        The idea of any wage is better than no wage ignores the fact staying employed has a minimum cost: Less access to family support, healthcare, political/social participation. Plus upfront costs of training, transpo

        • We need to get over this whole concept that anyone is entitled to profit off basic infrastructure.

          • The fundamental issue with capitalism. It's great for motivating people to work hard to accumulate wealth, but it has an inherent issue wealth concentration.

            Since only people with capital can earn without labour, and they decide what labourers get paid... capital ends up buying more capital and you end up with a class system that is binary poor/rich - and over time that ratio grows while mobility between the classes shrinks.

            Without some kind of reset, the system will ultimately result in an uber-wealthy cl

          • Seems like you need to get over the concept that you aren't entitled to other people's property.
          • Why is this your so-called basic infrastructure any different than any other good or service? You're more than welcome to build or provide as much housing as you wish for no profit whatsoever, but I don't see why you should be able to demand that anyone else have to do the same.

    • Yeah, I grew up in Texas, and while I love the state, it's become more blatantly conservative. I prefer the 90s when states were not so nearly so thoroughly dominated by single party rule. I prefer light blue states now.

    • Re:It's too conservative (Score:5, Informative)

      by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Monday December 25, 2023 @06:53PM (#64105293) Journal

      Minimum wage in California is going to $16/hr as of Jan 1, 2024.

      https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/mi... [ca.gov]

      On April 1, 2024, minimum wage for fast food will increase to $20/hr, across the state. This wage will be indexed for inflation until 2029.

      https://www.shrm.org/resources... [shrm.org]

      Healthcare will begin increases across the state in a variety of positions with an eventual floor of $25/hr.

      https://calmatters.org/health/... [calmatters.org]

      A number of local municipalities either equal or exceed those minimums already:

      (Berkeley 7/1/2023 $18.07)
      (West Hollywood 7/1/2023 $19.08)

      https://laborcenter.berkeley.e... [berkeley.edu]

      For those who are not familiar, current federal minimum wage is
      $7.25/hr

      https://www.dol.gov/general/to... [dol.gov]

      Other states vary - either following federal minimum wage guidelines or setting their own minimums.

      https://www.paycom.com/resourc... [paycom.com]

      To put it another way, come Jan 1, people working at McDonald's in California will make almost 3x the federal minimum wage. And since California is made up of urban and rural areas, that minimum wage will go much further in say, Salinas vs. Milpitas (both bay area adjacent communities).

      https://www.bestplaces.net/cos... [bestplaces.net]
      https://www.bestplaces.net/cos... [bestplaces.net]

      People who can't afford to living in higher cost of living areas normally move, and then commute. That's the way things normally go. As the regions of higher cost expand, it becomes exponentially more difficult to commute into jobs in those areas because of infrastructure limitations.

      Telecommuting is probably the closest we're going to get to the transporter, and my expectation is that it will eventually (if it hasn't already) slow wage growth in industries that adopt it, at least until the number of communities affected by the "zoom town" phenomenon top out and the same problems encountered in urban areas (lack of housing, increased cost of living, inability to house workers working lower end jobs) spreads nationally.

      At that point, the arbitrage advantage in working a remote job domestically ends and salaries start to normalize nationally. Why hire programmers from the bay area when you can hire them from the great plains instead? They're the same people - they fled the bay area with their massive cache of RSUs and bought houses and land outside of California using all cash offer. They don't even need to bring their politics with them to cause disruption to local and economies. All you need is for more of them to show up than local communities can absorb, same with any other kind of migrant.

      Fundamentally, what we're seeing is a transmission slipping gears. A mismatch between how fast the wheels are going and how high the engine is revving. If you hold the inputs steady, you should eventually reach equilibrium.

      Rents are too high? People stop moving in. There's less labor available. Wages are forced to go up, or people are forced to switch to other options. Works great for other cities and states that are capable of absorbing the flow of talent. Who knows, California may even be forced to make themselves competitive at some point, instead of indulging in a Sunset Ave-eque level of denial, as their tax base stops growing at a rate that will paper over the massive obligations that the state has assumed over the yea

      • Correction, as of Jan 1, fast food will make 2x, and as of Apr 1 almost 3x federal minimum wage.

      • We've been fighting for $15 since I was in high school. Adjusted for inflation, that's $30 now. So, $16 is still way too low.

      • Pretty sure California will just try and figure out how to kill prop 13 and try and increase their tax base off the homeowners. They keep doing what they can to water down prop 13 as it is but with higher income people leaving and broke people showing up, it's created a nice budget deficit of something like 68 billion for our next budget. Can't wait to see how many more tax increases they can find since we all know they won't slash social services or cancel some of their homeless budget that mostly just goe

    • Assuming a situation where demand and supply have found equilibrium, one response to someone pricing a good at a higher price is to undercut the slightly and just steal their business, if possible (you have higher efficiencies).

      For housing, this is only possible if you can build more housing, and at a rate that allows you to still make a profit while undercutting the competition. Otherwise you're potentially increasing the level at which they can raise prices, assuming more demand than can currently be sup

    • In other states, California's current minimum wage is enough to actually live on. Seems California has other problems besides its minimum wage.

      • Lolwut? $16 isn't enough to live on in Oklahoma for fucks sake.

        • It depends on your definition.

          No, it won't support a family.

          Yes, it will be enough to rent an apartment with a roommate and pay the bills.

          • No, it won't support a family.

            Yes, it will be enough to rent an apartment with a roommate and pay the bills.

            The Roosevelt definition of "gainfully raise a family while saving for the future." No job that pays too little to do that should exist in the first place, that's just slavery with extra steps. Make it actually worth doing.

            • Minimum wage was never intended to be enough to support a family. There are lots of kinds of people who don't need or want to do that:
              - Teenagers trying to make some extra spending money
              - Older people who want to step back from full-time work, but want to still have something to occupy their time
              - Spouses who want to devote more time to their families, and don't want the pressure of full-time work

              If you don't want a low-paying job, don't take one! Nobody is holding a gun to your head. There are plenty of go

              • Minimum wage was never intended to be enough to support a family.

                You know, if you have nothing of value to add to a conversation, it's generally considered polite to shut the fuck up.

                • Value--and a fair wage--is in the eyes of the beholder. What of value did you add by attacking me, instead of responding to the topic of the conversation? Usually, when someone starts attacking his opponent in a discussion, it means they have nothing else logical to say.

    • Last item for thought.

      For older construction (not new construction), as your percentage of long-standing tenants increases subject to rent control, you will eventually hit a tipping point where your real expenses due to inflation are outpacing your rent increases allowed under rent control. The cost of management, repairs, and especially insurance, not to mention the cost of any compliance required under rent control rules.

      Part of the reason units are priced so high when they come back on the market is not

      • To give an example of expenses that could tip you into the negative, there was a mandated soft-story retrofit.

        https://www.santamonica.gov/pr... [santamonica.gov]

        In Los Angeles, the cost of that was split between extra rent increases to rent controlled unit, capped at a maximum of $38/mo.

        "Hereâ(TM)s where it gets interesting: In cities with rent control, who should pay for the fixes has been the subject of some debate. The Los Angeles City Council determined that owners can pass half the retrofit costs to tenants through

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      CA residents seem to think this, but... well.

      California has (one of) the lowest average IQs in the country. The folks leaving are almost always upper middle class with some sort of asset/financial mobility and a job allowing them to move (and work remote - or be retired). It's fairly likely that the average IQ of CA has been moved dropped substantially.

      To be fair, it's improved somewhat in the last 20 years - it was the lowest by a long shot up until around 2012.

      https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-iq-by-s

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