California's population dropped by more than 500,000 in the two years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The newspaper noted that the number of California residents who left from April 2020 to July 2022 exceeds the number of people who moved in by almost 700,000, according to census data, which also shows that California's population decline was just behind New York, which lost about 15,000 more people during that time.
Paul Ong, director of the University of California Los Angeles' Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, told the Times that while economic, health, and sociopolitical factors have pushed people to leave, one major reason is high housing prices.
"While salaries in other regions and states are lower, the cost of housing is even lower," he said. "This means that they have a higher standard of living because of more disposable income and/or high chance of owning."
Ong said that most who leave Los Angeles County are fleeing the city of Los Angeles, saying that there was "a fast, clear and sharp spike during the pandemic," as residents moved "away from the denser urban core, where COVID-19 risk was perceived as being higher. Remote work also added to this out-migration."
The number of Californians leaving for neighboring states has caused some to warn them to "stay in California," as Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Friday.
"This last census confirmed that Utah was the fastest-growing state over the past 10 years," Cox said at the annual winter meeting for the National Governors Association in Washington. "Our biggest problems are more growth-related. We would love for people to stay in California instead of coming as refugees to Utah."