Even after three years of decline, though, California remains by far the nation’s most populous state, home to one in eight U.S. residents.
Palmer, spokesman for the California Department of Finance.
The primary driver of the state’s population loss has been Californians moving to other states, like Texas, Nevada, Idaho or Oregon, according to Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
Between July 2021 and July 2022, the net movement out of California was a record 407,000 people, he said.
California has been losing residents to other states for decades, though that was usually offset by arriving immigrants, whose numbers plummeted in 2020.