Thread: Press On: The California Exodus

record-bee.com
From staff reports
Updated: 12/30/2011 02:29:47 PM PST

By Gary Dickson

In a state of more than 37 million people, you wouldn't think that a loss of population would be a concern to anyone. In fact, some would probably consider it a blessing.

But, the reality is that when people stop migrating to a particular location, that has generally been a strong signal that something is wrong there, such as a lack of jobs or cost of living expenses that are out of whack.

Here in California, according to an article by Bill Watkins in New Geography, the state has been in a negative domestic migration mode at least since 1990. U.S. Census statistics indicate that 3,642,490 people have left California since 1990. Watkins stated, "If they were in one city, it would be the third largest city in America "

My father left Oklahoma as a teenager to move in with his sister and brother-in-law in Richmond , to work in the shipyard during World War II.

Back then thousands of people had left the dustbowl ravaged Midwest for jobs in California. It's interesting that today Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas all have a net-positive domestic migration number, while California is in the red.

The word, regarding California, is out in Mexico, too. Even illegal immigration numbers into the state have slowed. Those choosing to leave Mexico for the United States are choosing to settle in states other than California.

Since 2000 the immigrant population has been frozen at 27 percent of the population.

In 2010 California reached a 100-year low in the percentage of its total population that had moved here from out-of-state or out-of-country of about 20 percent. It was the first time in more than 100 years that the majority of California residents were native-born.

What is causing the migration reversal for California? Well, initially it was housing prices that were so far out-of-line with many other places around the country.

When the housing bubble burst one would have thought that would have caused people to run toward California, due to the housing bargains, but by then the jobs had all gone away.

So, a lack of jobs became the other major cause for people to move elsewhere and for people elsewhere not to come here.

Another factor is how business owners view their opportunity to successfully conduct business in California , or not.

A recent survey by Small Business California, a San Francisco-based business advocacy group, indicated that one out of five California small-business owners don't plan to be in California in three years.

Some of the comments provided by business owners included, "We will go where we can operate profitably.", "The way things are going we'll have to move out of state just to survive." and "If I am (still in business in 2014), it will be in another state. The business and regulatory climate in CA is too oppressive."

With all that is great about California , there are some obvious problems that have to be fixed if the 20-year run of negative migration is ended.

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Yes, we up here can attest to this, they are moving up here and a good number of them (not the average working family types) are trying to make changes to our communities that reflect what they had in California, large tracts of crunched in houses with no trees in the yards, gated communities, farmland torn up by new zoning that allows those large tracts of homes, then they take time off to go skiing up on the mountain, in their LandRovers, Hummers, Escalades and Subaru Outbacks...Sorry Californians, I know you all aren't this way, just the ones coming up here for a more "sustainable" way of life.....