The U.S. Census Bureau has reported that over 500,000 people have left California between April 2020 and July 2022.
California has been seeing a trend in population decline for the past few years, with the COVID pandemic, rising housing costs, and challenges of living in big cities pushing people to move to a simpler lifestyle.
In the last year of the two-year timespan, from July 2021 to July 2022, 211,000 people left California, and more than half of that number was from Los Angeles County alone.
We asked USC students why they thought so many people were leaving the state.
The main answer we got were the various costs of living in California, such as high gas prices and housing expenses.
Students also shared their plans after graduation.
Marina Earle, a sophomore majoring in film and television production, said that she does not plan on staying in California after college.
MARINA EARLE: I am a film production major, which is kind of an odd choice because you want to be in L.A. and everyone says you have to be in Los Angeles to make it and be in Hollywood. But since I’m from the East Coast, I just I don’t know. I don’t know if I really belong here. So I’m thinking about going to New York, maybe. And I culturally, I think I miss a lot of the things from the East Coast.
Michael Vaughan, a sophomore from Newport Beach majoring in political science, said that he will most likely stay in California after graduating, but he has reservations, mostly for long term issues such as family planning and future finances
MICHAEL VAUGHAN: I think I will be staying in California after I graduate college. The only thing that would deter me from it is probably the property taxes here and how expensive the cost of living is. If I were to move somewhere, it would probably be somewhere like Texas or Florida, where it’s a little bit cheaper to live and I probably can start a family off out of college and not have to worry about not having enough money and stuff like that.
Vaughan’s desire to move to Texas or Florida is part of a growing trend. While California and New York both lost hundreds of thousands of residents in the past two years, Texas and Florida’s populations have increased substantially.
Between the two year time span when California lost over half a million residents, Texas gained about 884,000 new residents and Florida gained about 707,000.