Population fell by 182,000 amid declining birth rate, reductions in immigration and an increase in deaths because of Covid
California’s population fell by more than 182,000 people in 2020, marking the first year-over-year loss ever recorded for the nation’s most populous state.
State officials announced Friday that California’s population dipped 0.46% to just under 39.5 million people from January 2020 to January 2021.
The news comes one week after the US Census Bureau announced a paltry population growth for the state, resulting in it losing a congressional seat for the first time. The census numbers reflect the state’s population in April 2020. The new state numbers released reflect the state’s population as of January 2021.
California became a state in 1850 on the heels of a gold rush that prompted people to seek their fortune out west. The population soared after the second world war with the help of a robust defense and aerospace industry. It boomed again in the 1980s and 1990s as technology companies put Silicon Valley on the map.
But the growth slowed after the end of the cold war in the 1990s when the federal government cut back on defense spending and again in the years before the Great Recession in the late 2000s.
State officials say California has seen more people leave than move in from other states for much of the last three decades. However, that had been offset by international immigration and births so that California continued to grow.
That changed in 2020. State officials say a declining birthrate, plus reductions in international immigration and an increase in deaths because of the coronavirus, led to the state’s first ever year-over-year population loss.
California had a negative international migration in 2020, which state officials say was a direct impact from the Trump administration’s decision to stop issuing new visas for much of that year. Coronavirus restrictions around the world also caused about a 29% decline in international students coming to California, or about 53,000 people.
In addition, about 51,000 people died from the coronavirus in California last year. That’s a 19% increase above the state’s average death rate for the past three years.
In a news release, the California department of finance said it expects the state to return to a “slightly positive annual growth” for the 2021 calendar year. Those numbers will be released next May.
