California made history, which validates a lot of people’s perceptions of the state right now, and has to make state leaders a little nervous. If they still care about things like this.  

For the first time ever, the state recorded it’s first year-over-year decline in population. 182,000 more people left the state than entered.  That’s roughly the amount of people that live in Providence, Rhode Island, so it is fairly significant, and it’s never happened before. 

The overall population from January 2020 to January 2021 fell 0.46% to just under 39.5 million people. 

There are ramifications to this. The state lost a congressional seat for the first time because it grew slower than other states over the past decade. 

The biggest cities in California, including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Anaheim and Long Beach all had declines in their population.  Mid range cities like Sacramento, Fresno, Oakland and Bakersfield all saw their population go up. 

Here’s another interesting fact about California population.  The state has had more people leave the state than those moving in from other states consistently throughout the past three decades, but making up for it was the influx of immigrants from other countries, along the state to continue to grow.

 The decision of the Trump administration to stop issuing visas for most of 2020 slowed down the international migration. 

Another factor in the population decline was the 51,000 deaths from Covid the state reportedly experienced.  That amounted to a 19% increase in the death rate for the state over the previous year. 

So there you go. It all adds up to the Golden State losing a little luster with their first population decline ever. 

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