[dave8721]

Originally Posted by craigs

And California grew by 2.6 million between 2010 and 2020.

Essentially, people moved out of the state, and not enough people moved into the state to replace those who left mostly because the pandemic brought international immigration to a screeching halt, but also because it kept over 80,000 students abroad from entering the country to study at California universities. Meanwhile, births declined slightly while deaths increased year-over-year by about 20%, for obvious reasons.

After 171 straight years of growth, California could possibly benefit from a breather before growth resumes. And because of the historic nature of the pandemic that so strongly impacted the state's demographics, I doubt we'll see another year-over-year population loss, but who knows.

This. People have always been moving out of California. Due to the pandemic, they were not replaced with international immigration for once. Once things get back to normal, we can assume international immigration will come back and most will go to California like they always have.