Blog: Californians move here from Illinois and leave for Arizona: Migration data shows trends

High taxes. Stifling regulations. Exorbitant housing costs. Freeway gridlock. Fires and floods.

Hand-wringing over an exodus of disillusioned Californians may be a Golden State pastime, the subject of political punditry and strung-out social media threads.

But the latest data are far from dire. The U.S. Census Bureau, in its newly released surveys for 2017, shows that California’s net migration remained fairly stable. Since 2010, as the economic recovery took hold and housing prices skyrocketed, departures accelerated — but the number of newcomers rose steadily as well.

The state attracts a steady stream of college graduates, especially from the East Coast, even as many less-educated residents move to neighboring states — and to Texas — in search of a lower cost of living.

Consider that in 2017:

• More people left California (661,026) than arrived (523,131) from other U.S. states. But for the nation’s most populous state, with 39 million residents, that amounted to a tiny fraction in net departures: just 0.35%.
• Among the 25-years-and-older set, the state lost a net 86,890 residents without bachelor’s degrees, and just 4,443 with a four-year degree. It gained 11,653 people with graduate degrees.
• No state boasts more loudly of its attractions than Texas. Indeed, 63,174 people relocated from California to the nation’s second-most populous state, more than to anywhere else in the U.S. But it’s also true that no state sent more people here than the Lone Star State — 40,999.

“The cost of living, especially housing, is what stops the whole world from moving to California,” said USC demographer Dowell Myers, a longtime census expert. “Otherwise, who wouldn’t prefer California? We have superior weather. We have mountains and oceans. And we have better jobs — better paying and more specialized, whether in tech, entertainment, the arts or medicine.”

In the 1980s, Myers said, “millions of people came to California — too many — and that created an anti-growth backlash. But California has been losing people to other states since 2004. We lost people in the bubble because housing prices were so high. We lost them in the recession because our job market was worse than the rest of the country.”

While New Yorkers made a continental leap, slightly boosting California’s population, the three states accounting for the Golden State’s highest net losses in 2017 are along the border: Arizona (which gained 32,326 Californians), Oregon (29,561) and Nevada (23,745).

Paul McDermott, a Philadelphia native, first visited California in 1995. “I rented a convertible Mustang,” he recalled. “A friend took me to Newport Beach and we did something called rollerblading. Then and there I decided I wanted to move to California.”

But in October, McDermott, 59, a manager for a security guard company, and his fiancee moved to Henderson, Nev. “After 22 years in California, the politics, restrictive gun laws and the ridiculously high cost of living drove me out,” he said.

He was paying $1,900 a month to rent a two-bedroom apartment in Huntington Beach. Now he pays $1,500 a month at a newer complex in Henderson. And Nevada has no state income tax.

The census report doesn’t reveal why people leave, but economics, lifestyle and culture may all play a part.

McDermott chose Nevada in part because of the warm weather. But also, he said, he was irked at the red tape involved in obtaining a concealed weapon in California, one required for his job.” And then, he said, “there was the whole California mind-set: The final ‘straw,’ if you will pardon the pun, was when they restricted straws in restaurants…. I mean, seriously?”

On the other hand, Aimee Imlay, a 38-year-old San Diego social worker who recently moved to Lexington, Ky., for graduate school to study economic inequality, says emphatically, “I did not choose Kentucky based on weather and politics, to be sure.”

Rather, she said, the University of Kentucky’s stipend ”is similar to what the UCs offer and my money goes so much farther here.”

Despite the departures, California’s overall population has grown. Even as the number of California babies born each year has dropped since 1990, paralleling the aging of the U.S. population, the number of births still exceeded the number of deaths by about 220,000 in 2017, according to the California Department of Finance.

Moreover, international newcomers rose by a net 185,000 last year despite a steep drop in Mexican immigrants, from about 150,000 a year in the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s to about 40,000 a year in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. That reflects an improved Mexican economy and a government birth control push.

At the same time, immigrants from China, India and other Asian nations are moving to California in greater numbers. Between 2012 and 2016, 58% of new California immigrants came from Asia, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, while just 28% came from Latin America.

“Many Asians come for technology jobs,” Myers said. “Also, they can handle the housing prices better than Mexican immigrants.”

Neena Moorjani, 45, moved from her native Hong Kong to California to attend college at Biola University in La Mirada. After gaining her bachelor’s degree, she worked in public relations, moving to Washington, D.C., then to Singapore and, two years ago, back to the Golden State.

In Sacramento, Moorjani took a UC Davis course to become a certified financial planner, but now, she said, high taxes and rising housing costs are driving her out. She is moving to Virginia to be closer to family. “I need to buy a home soon and homes there are half the price,” she said.

Like Moorjani, most of California’s newcomers from abroad are well educated. According to a study by the Public Policy Institute, 51% of working-age immigrants who had lived in California for five years or less as of 2016 had bachelor’s or graduate degrees, compared with 37% of all Californians.

Better educated, better paid

For college graduates, California’s high-tech economy is a powerful draw.

Paul Jordan, 28, and Alexandra Bede, 27, moved from the East Coast to San Francisco in April. The couple rent a one-bedroom apartment in the hip Potrero Hill neighborhood for $3,740 a month.

“The rents are ridiculous,” said Jordan, a Duke University graduate who works for a venture capital firm specializing in sustainable energy and industrial innovation. But he and Bede, a supply chain manager for an e-commerce firm, can afford it with their six-figure salaries.

A report from the state legislative analyst’s office in February found that “although California has had net out-migration among most demographic groups, it has gained among those with higher incomes ($110,000 per year or more) and higher levels of education (graduate degrees).”

“Families with kids and those with only a high school education predominate among those moving from California to its top destination states,” it said.

From 2012 through 2017, Myers said, newcomers with bachelor’s and graduate degrees poured into California from other states, showing a net increase of about 76,000 over those leaving. At the same time, those with less than a four-year degree left in droves — a net loss of more than 400,000.

The imbalance may not be entirely positive. “We need low-skill workers too — hospital orderlies, school bus drivers, nannies and gardeners,” Myers said.

For Jordan, working in venture capital, California’s “dynamic energy” is the main attraction. “Everything new hits here first,” he said. “You feel like you are in the avant-garde.”

Still, the state’s high taxes and rents “impact everyone who lives here,” he said. “We are fortunate to be in the segment of the economy with high-paying jobs. But you can’t escape the fact that homelessness is a huge problem and people are getting displaced.”

The danger is that California will continue to attract 20-somethings but lose 30-somethings. “Young people do most of the moving,” Myers said. “They hunt around, and California is a big magnet. But then they face severe housing prices here, so the families are being lost. We are not growing a complete society.”

Meanwhile, he said, “Baby boomers are exiting the workforce. About a third are retired, with two-thirds to go. But they are still occupying housing.