California lost over 200,000 residents to domestic migration between 2018 to 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
California was among the top states that had the highest numbers of people who left the state for other states, according to state population totals released on Monday, with minus 203,414 residents. New York state had a loss of 180,649, Illinois had minus 104,986, New Jersey had minus 48,946, Massachusetts had minus 30,274, and 26,045 left the state of Louisiana.
The report said that between 2018 and 2019, 27 states plus Washington lost population to domestic migration. Six of the 27 lost over 25,000 people and three of the 27 lost more than 100,000.
Despite the high volume of people leaving the state, California is still one of the most populated states with more than 39 million people residing in it, reported The Washington Examiner. Texas has the second highest population with a little slightly less than 39 million, and Florida has just over 21 million people in the state.
The report noted that the population in the United States is almost 330 million and is grew by 0.5 percent between 2018 and 2019. “Annual growth peaked at 0.73 percent this decade in the period between 2014 and 2015. The growth between 2018 and 2019 is a continuation of a multiyear slowdown since that period,” the report stated.
Of the four regions in the country, the South saw the largest numeric and percentage growth between 2018 and 2019 mainly through domestic migration, or more people from other parts of the country having moved to the South.
“Our failure to build enough housing is at the heart of CA’s challenges: It’s exploding housing costs; It’s fueling homelessness & poverty; It’s creating sprawl, increasing traffic, commutes & wildfire risk,” Democratic California state Sen. Scott Wiener wrote on Twitter.
The San Diego Union-Tribune has called the high cost of housing a crisis in the state, and wrote after the data was released: “California’s nearly 40 million residents can appreciate its natural beauty and weather. But when well more than the rule-of-thumb 30 percent of your paycheck goes to rent for so many, it’s easy to be sour.”
