SACRAMENTO — We’ve followed all of the studies showing how many people have left California since the pandemic began, but depending on where you look, some narratives seem worse than others.
In fact, some of the latest numbers show that more people are moving to California.
There is no denying that California has seen a dramatic population decline in recent years. Rebecca Hoehne and her family increased the number as they packed up and moved to Texas.
“It wasn’t a reactive move. It was a proactive move to take advantage of a business opportunity that we had,” she said.
Rebecca and her husband Travis run their own photography and lifestyle business called Awesomeness.us. A business project took them to Texas, but after two and a half years they were ready to come back – and it seems they’re not the only ones.
Ryan Lundquist, a Sacramento-based real estate analyst, thinks California’s so-called exodus is a bit skewed and says the numbers are muddled. He said he actually sees people moving to the Golden State.
A recent estimate from the US Census showed that more than 125,000 new residents came to California last year after a surge in the number of people moving to the US from abroad.
While LinkedIn ranked San Francisco among the top ten cities with the most labor losses in February 2022, a year later it ranks second among the places in the country for the most labor gains.
“We have a one-sided view of reality, and so we should be aware that there are people who are leaving the state in larger numbers,” Lundquist said. “But if we don’t pay attention to the other factors responsible for why the population is changing the way it is, we miss part of the narrative and can create sensationalism.”
“And so we thought, it’s a given. We’re going back to Cali,” said Travis Hoehne.
Real estate analysts have pointed to several factors that have caused California’s population to decline in recent years: a declining birth rate and higher death rate, particularly since COVID-19, and changes in immigration policies that are slowing migration to the United States
Marlee Ginter
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