California demographic shift: More people leaving than moving in More people are moving out of the state than are moving in. It's the economy, of course, especially housing costs. For a clue to why California is losing its allure as a place to settle down, just ask Jennifer McCluer, who moved out of California in 2007 after she obtained her license in skin care. Unable to afford Orange County's sky-high rents, she opted for Portland, Ore. "A big motivator was that I lived with roommate after roommate after roommate," said McCluer, 30. "Friends said you could probably live on your own up here. The rent was a huge deal for me." McCluer would like to move back, but it's still too expensive. "It's really difficult," McCluer said. "I've given myself 11/2 to two years to save money." Recent census figures show the state is losing more Californians like McCluer than it is attracting from other parts of the U.S. And the trend toward out-migration is looking less like a blip than a long-term condition. The proportion of Californians who had moved here from out of state reached a 100-year low of about 20% in 2010, and the decade measured by the most recent census was the first in a century in which the majority of Californians were native-born. The demographics of California today more closely resemble those of 1900 than of 1950: It is a mostly home-grown population, whose future depends on the children of immigrants and their children, said William Frey, a demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "We used to say California, here we come," said Frey. "That now has flipped." Experts point to various causes of the turnaround, most of them rooted in a flagging economy. But exorbitant housing prices too high for many struggling Californians despite a burst housing bubble still play a role. "There's a lot of concern about driving out working-class families," said Hans Johnson of the Public Policy Institute of California. It was a different world in the 1950s and '60s, when roughly half of Californians were drawn from other states by jobs and by visions of crystalline blue skies in January and beach parties in September. The state's shining image was burnished by a public relations machine that pushed attractive suburban real estate and a wide-open field for business. As domestic immigration slowed between 1970 and 2000, foreign immigration filled in the gap. But since 2000, even the state's once-growing immigrant population has been frozen at 27% of total residents. Since at least 2005, more residents have left California than arrived here from other states. The outflow, driven by high housing prices before the bubble burst, slowed as the recession brought prices down, then ticked back up in 2010 as the job picture remained dim, census data show. And there is no sign of the old luster returning. Migration all over the United States has slowed to a crawl in this recession, and the exodus from Mexico is diminishing because of border violence and U.S. job shortages. That means the state increasingly will have to rely on the people it produces to power the economy. Some analysts see a dark future in the loss of the demographic dynamism that has been the state's hallmark. "A steady-state California is both a contradiction in terms and a recipe for decline," said historian and author Mike Davis, who teaches writing at UC Riverside. Davis said warehousing and other commerce in inland California produces relatively few jobs, while employment in Los Angeles County is increasingly concentrated in small, poorly capitalized service businesses that could collapse in a recession. "This is a totally different world from the days when the aerospace industry was the big engine," Davis said. The more static population makes it critical for California to educate and train its children to replace baby boomers as they retire, said Stephen Levy of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. "It places a larger burden on the state's ability to get everybody through high school and some post-secondary training," Levy said. Author D.J. Waldie, who writes about Southern California, said constant demographic change came to define the state's sense of self. If the churning stops, California faces an unknown future, he said. "How do we understand California when it's not Californian anymore?" Waldie asked. Waldie questioned whether the state could lose the competition for young, bright minds because "it's so hard to break in here." Felix Eisenhauer, a classical pianist, found out just how hard after graduating from USC, when the only work he could find was waiting tables in a bowling alley. So in 2009, he and his fiancee, who'd been downsized from a job singing with the Los Angeles Opera, moved to her hometown of Boise, Idaho. Eisenhauer, 27, now plays with a Boise ballet company and teaches piano at a local community college. "I get to work as a musician here," he said. Back in California, "a lot of my friends aren't doing that." But though fewer outsiders cherish California dreams and some residents have soured on them those who depart may soon mourn what they leave behind: diversity of every stripe, mountains, ocean, climate. Especially climate. Eisenhauer, who was born in Northern California, still loves the Golden State. Like McCluer, he hopes to return. "My personal goal is to move back there eventually. It's just a matter of making the finances work," he said. John Husing of Economics & Politics Inc., a regional research firm, said, that although the financial decline is steep and recovery will be slow, the California lifestyle is too appealing for the state to remain down forever. Husing recalled a meeting two weeks ago with a business associate from the East Coast. An unseasonable storm was making the other side of the country even more aggravating than usual. When the man arrived at Los Angeles International, he was exultant: His partner was stuck in Connecticut with no power, he crowed, "and I get to come to California!" http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-california-move-20111127,0,5338351.story Progressive ideology kills another political unit. Progressive policy is well known as a municipality killer, but now it has moved up to a state killer. California's debt will turn it into a North American version of Greece. It may drag the US down and the PIGS are dragging the EU down. America's only hope is to vote the progressives out of power as a rule. It has already begun in Europe. Spain just sent the progressives packing. _
We here in California have known this for a long time. In fact we have been losing people for over a decade and replacing good jobs with illegal alien work. Thus our revenue has dried up. Why? California Democrats have made it painful for a business to remain competitive and even to survive. Their anti-business stance has destroyed many jobs and lowered our standard of living significantly.
90% OF POPULATION GROWTH IN CALIFORNIA AND 70% OF POPULATION GROWTH IN THE NATION DURING THE 1990s WAS FROM IMMIGRATION AND THE IMMIGRANTS OFFSPRING. http://www.cis.org
They used to say that if you wanted to see the future of America in 15 years, look at what is happening in California now. If that's our future in 15 years, we're in real trouble.
That has nothing to do with it. I wouldn't move to California because I wouldn't want to pay $800,000 for a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house. If anything, free market inflation in California has caused it to implode. Houses selling for a million bucks over there sell for 120k in central Illinois where I live. It was only a matter of time before they priced themselves out of reasonable means of living. Its Capitalism biting itself in the butt, as it does. I'm not saying its a bad thing, only that its a great time to sell high on California real estate (if you didn't 3 years ago). My guess is that 15 years from now some of the high end suburban areas will resemble Flint, Michigan, and you'll be able to buy property for 1 penny per 20 dollars. California has suffered the last 20 years from being the center of the tech boom and the Hollywood lifestyle. It made for a lot of wealth in the state, but a lot of irresponsible business practices as well. It was only a matter of time before the gold rush ended (once again). This isn't a government problem, its a business practice problem.
The democrats have taken this once great and flushed it down the toilet. That's why I moved out, it is a pathetic shame of what they have done.
Housing prices are inflated in part thanks to the regulatory poop storm in place to protect green space and endangered species and coastal views and .... dozens of other agendas that all get added to the price of EVERY HOME, NOT JUST THOSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
Thats the biggest load of crap I've read here in weeks. Housing prices in California took off because its money central for the world. You've got literally thousands of actors/actresses/directors/producers, each making 7-8 figure incomes. You've got the largest group of winners from the tech boom of the early and later 2000's. There are more "new" millionaires and billionaires out of Silicon valley in the last decade than ANY state/province/county or country in history. These are the people at the ground level of IPO's, you know the ones that bought on the ground floor and sold before the ceiling collapsed each time. That money spread through California like, well, a Californian wildfire. More suburban wealth, more rich suburban housewife consumers, and more plastic body parts than anywhere in the world. That has NOTHING to do with liberals protecting the environment. Oh by the way, they are also one of the largest agriculture environments in the country and world. Seriously, you guys will look for ANY spin that you can denounce the left with, even the dumbest most ignorant garbage you can come up with. If you have some sort of statistic to back up your insane distortion, please provide it my friend.
What is "free market inflation"? There's very little that's free market about the housing industry in California. Aside from the enormous regulatory costs placed upon new home building or old home remodeling, so-called "Smart growth" programs and initiatives have drastically reduced the amount of new homes and multi-family structures that can be built. Supply is artificially reduced, thus increasing the cost as demand rises. That's not inflation. That's extremely unlikely except in some really bad areas of California, such as the undesirable desert regions. California has a great deal to offer in terms of natural beauty and year round outdoor recreation. As prices drop, those who want to come here will come and they'll drive up the prices again because very little new construction is allowed to occur. It is a government problem, but it was driven by those with wealth who wanted to keep out everyone else and preserve every open space possible. Even in my city, which is 80% undeveloped space as mandated by law, we have the opportunity to build out 5,000 acres of former Navy property. What does the public demand? Parks. Capitalism would build, and the price of housing would drop in response to the enormous demand. Blaming capitalists for the problem of not enough homes is ridiculously naive. Oh, and we didn't "suffer" for the tech boom or the rise of Hollywood. We benefited from the massive amounts of wealth creation and the spur of new businesses and even free media like this forum on which you post. I doubt such a forum would exist in the anti-capitalist utopia where central committees decide what you need and what you will provide.
california is one of the best welfare states, its not the poor that are leaving the rich aren't leaving either they have the best ocean front real estate there. its the middle class
Just curious, since you have an outspoken political stance, why do you think the middle class is leaving? No joke, I am genuinely curious.
