4 Million Americans Left California in 24 Years. Newsom’s International Immigration Cushion Just Ran Out of Road.

• 4 million+ net domestic migrants left California over 24 consecutive years under Democratic governance — Governing / CA DOF
• 216,000 vs 126,000 domestic outmigration vs. international arrivals in 2024–25 — net migration deficit of 89,000 — CA DOF E-2, Feb. 2026
• $11.9 billion net adjusted gross income lost to outmigration in a single year — the largest of any U.S. state — IRS SOI 2022–23
• 50th / last U-Haul ranking for the 6th straight year — more trucks leave California than any other state in the nation — U-Haul Growth Index 2025
• 13.3% California's top income tax rate — highest in the U.S.; top destination states Texas, Florida, Nevada: 0% — Tax Foundation

For over two decades, more Americans have left California than arrived from other states — every single year, without exception. The state managed to post modest total population growth by leaning on two crutches: natural increase (more births than deaths) and international immigration. Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) presided over both crutches and called the arrangement resilience. The data calls it something else.

The California Department of Finance’s February 2026 E-2 estimates ended that narrative. In 2024–25, net international immigration dropped to 126,000 — roughly half the prior year’s level — while net domestic outmigration held at 216,000. For the first time in years, international arrivals could not compensate for the Americans leaving. California recorded a net total migration deficit of over 89,000 residents. The state’s total population grew only because of natural increase, a demographic forcing function that is itself shrinking as California’s birth rate plummets toward 40th in the nation.

The IRS keeps receipts. Its Statistics of Income migration data for 2022–23 shows California posted a net adjusted gross income loss of $11.9 billion— the largest of any state. The California Legislative Analyst’s Office calculated that over a three-year window, $102 billion in income left the state via taxpayer outmigration. These are not the poorest residents who cannot afford to move. The LAO found the departures skew decisively toward middle- and upper-income households — the earners the state’s budget depends on most.

The mechanics of departure are not complicated. California’s top marginal income tax rate is 13.3% — the highest in the country. Texas, Florida, and Nevada — the top three states absorbing Californians — have no state income tax at all. California’s gas tax is 70.92 cents per gallon, among the nation’s highest. The median home price in December 2024 was $861,020. In Texas it was $308,000.

A March 2026 UC Berkeley study found that Californians who relocated moved to neighborhoods with rents averaging $638 per month lower and home prices averaging $398,000 lower than what they left behind. The same study attributed the migration primarily to California’s housing cost crisis. California ranks 49th nationally in homeownership rate. California’s cost of living index runs 13% above the national average — with groceries 11% higher, gas 40% higher, and utilities 61% higher.

Statewide rent control (AB 1482, signed 2019) capped annual rent increases at 5% + CPI but applied only to properties over 15 years old, effectively creating a two-tier market. The California Coastal Commission and CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) have blocked or delayed housing construction for decades — a single CEQA lawsuit can stall a multi-family development for 5–10 years. The California Policy Lab found that residents who relocated paid median rents 32% lower in their new cities. The income needed to qualify for a median-priced home in Los Angeles is $180,000 per year. In Houston it is $67,000.

In 2014, California voters passed Proposition 47, which reclassified theft of goods valued under $950 from a felony to a misdemeanor. The practical effect was a green light for organized retail crime. Smash-and-grab crews hit Nordstrom, Louis Vuitton, and CVS locations across Los Angeles and San Francisco with impunity — stealing up to $949 worth of goods per individual, knowing prosecution was effectively zero. The California Retailers Association documented a 28% increase in organized retail theft in the three years following Prop 47’s passage. Walgreens closed 17 San Francisco locations between 2019 and 2022 citing theft and safety as primary reasons.

The soft-on-crime DA experiment accelerated the problem. San Francisco elected Chesa Boudin (D) District Attorney in 2019 on a platform of ending mass incarceration. He was recalled by San Francisco voters in June 2022 — 55% to 45% — after homicides rose 37% and auto burglaries hit record levels. Los Angeles elected George Gascón (D) District Attorney in 2020. Gascón’s office ended cash bail for most misdemeanors and felonies, dismissed sentence enhancements, and barred prosecutors from seeking life-without-parole sentences for murder. He was recalled in September 2024 after a recall campaign driven by crime victims and law enforcement. His successor reversed most of his policies within 90 days.

California’s 2024 violent crime rate was 481 per 100,000 residents — above the national average of approximately 370 per 100,000. Property crime ran at 2,084 per 100,000 against a national rate of 1,835. California recorded 1,782 homicides in 2024 — the largest absolute count of any state. AB 109 (prison realignment, 2011) transferred tens of thousands of low-level felony offenders from state prison to county jails, which promptly released many of them. The Public Policy Institute of California found that AB 109 was associated with a 7% increase in auto theft in its first year. Survey data consistently lists crime as a top-three reason Californians cite for considering leaving.

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California is home to approximately 181,000 homeless individuals — representing 28% of the nation’s entire homeless population while the state contains only 12% of the U.S. population. Since 2018, California has spent an estimated $24 billion on homelessness programs at the state level alone. The homeless count has increased every year since 2015.

Governor Newsom’s CARE Court program, launched 2023, was designed to compel treatment for severely mentally ill homeless individuals. An independent audit found that as of late 2024, CARE Court had enrolled fewer than 1,000 participants statewide — far below projections. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s (D) Inside Safe program spent $67 million to permanently house 255 people — a per-person cost of $262,745 — with 40% of housed individuals later returning to the streets, according to an Alvarez & Marsal audit of $2.3 billion in city homelessness spending. San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness spent $1.1 billion in 2023–24. The city had more drug overdose deaths than COVID deaths every year since 2020.

Encampments under highways, in parks, along riverbeds, and on commercial corridors are a documented factor in business departures and residential relocation decisions. PPIC surveys show 38% of Californians rated homelessness as one of the two biggest problems facing their community — second only to housing costs. The two crises reinforce each other: the same regulation and NIMBY opposition that prevents affordable housing construction also blocks new shelter capacity.

California added more than 20,000 new regulations between 2010 and 2024, per the California Business Roundtable’s regulatory tracking database. Assembly Bill 5 (AB5, 2019) reclassified hundreds of thousands of independent contractors as employees under California law — generating compliance costs that killed entire service sectors. Freelance writers, musicians, truckers, and app-based gig workers were all affected. The law drove Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash to spend $200 million on Proposition 22 (2020) to carve out an exemption. Over 300 companies moved headquarters out of California from 2018 to 2024.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) allows any individual or organization to sue to block any development project on environmental grounds — with no obligation to post bond and no penalty for losing. Environmental law firms in California routinely use CEQA not to protect the environment but to extract settlements from developers and delay competitor projects. The result: California permitted 100,000 fewer housing units per year than its housing element law required between 2013 and 2023. The California Coastal Commission, an unelected state body, has blocked or conditioned housing, energy, and infrastructure projects along the state’s coastline for 50 years.

The corporate departures are documented: Tesla moved its headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin in 2021. SpaceX relocated from Hawthorne to Starbase, Texas in 2024. Charles Schwab moved to Westlake, Texas in 2019. Oracle moved to Austin in 2020. Hewlett Packard Enterprise moved to Houston in 2021. Chevron announced a move of its headquarters to Houston in 2024. Joel Kotkin’s analysis found that corporate new investment in California was one-tenth that of Texas and one-sixteenth that of Ohio. The Dallas-Fort Worth metro captured 100 headquarters relocations from 2018 to 2024; Austin captured 81 more.

California automatically registers eligible residents to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license or state ID, through the Motor Voter program enacted in 2015. The state does not require a photo ID to vote in person or to vote by mail. Same-day voter registration is available at any polling location on Election Day. California mails a ballot to every registered voter for every election — a system that generated 18.5 million mail-in ballots in the 2024 presidential election.

California’s ballot harvesting law, enacted via AB 1921 (2016), allows any person — paid or unpaid, party operative or not — to collect and submit mail-in ballots on behalf of voters. It is one of only a handful of states to permit unlimited third-party ballot collection with no restrictions on who may serve as a collector. Critics, including then-Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, documented Democratic organizations deploying paid ballot harvesters in targeted precincts in 2018 and 2020. The practice has no parallel in states like Texas, Georgia, or Wisconsin, all of which require in-person voting or restrict third-party ballot collection. For conservative Californians who believe election integrity is compromised by these laws, the state’s electoral system is itself a cited reason for relocating to states with stricter voter verification requirements.

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California’s Democratic Party has held a supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature since 2012 — sufficient to pass constitutional amendments, override governor vetoes, and raise taxes without any Republican votes. Governor Newsom, who took office January 2019, served previously as San Francisco mayor from 2004 to 2011 — a tenure during which San Francisco’s homelessness count rose from approximately 8,000 to 10,000. He ran for governor on a platform of universal healthcare, free college, and housing justice. Seven years into his tenure, California has a $17.7 billion projected deficit for FY 2026–27 and structural shortfalls of $15–$25 billion projected through at least 2029.

California’s state legislature passed more than 1,200 bills in 2023 alone. The state has mandated 100% zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035 (AB 1346, EV mandate). It has proposed a wealth tax on assets of Californians who moved to other states — a concept that drew legal challenges before it was narrowed. It passed SB 54, the Fair Pay to Play Act, allowing college athletes to profit from NIL before the NCAA changed its national rules. It passed SB 50, attempting to eliminate single-family zoning statewide, before the bill died in committee twice. State Senator Roger Niello (R-CA) has described the Democratic majority’s spending trajectory as carrying “unstoppable spending problems” with no structural solution.

“California has become a state that is increasingly difficult for ordinary Americans to afford. The people who can leave — and have options — are leaving.”

Joel Kotkin, Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures, Chapman University · RealClearInvestigations

The most concrete political consequence arrived after the 2020 Census. California lost a congressional seat — dropping from 53 to 52 House members — for the first time in 171 years of statehood. PPIC demographer Hans Johnson: “It’s a fixed pie, and California did not grow as fast as the rest of the nation.” Texas gained two seats. Florida gained one. Each seat represents a share of $1.5 trillion in annual federal funding distributed by population.

The 2030 Census outlook is substantially worse. Carnegie Mellon redistricting scholar Jonathan Cervas, whose work has been cited in California and national redistricting litigation, has projected California could lose 3 to 4 additional seats in the 2030 apportionment — potentially dropping the delegation to 48 members, a level not seen since the early 1980s, based on current demographic trends. (Source: Governing Magazine, April 2025, citing Cervas’s apportionment modeling work.)

In 2007, California’s own Department of Finance projected the state’s population would reach 60 million by 2050. The current projection is approximately 40 million — a 33% downward revision in less than two decades. Governing magazine documented the revision in April 2025.

California’s fertility rate dropped from 17th highest in the U.S. in 2008 to 40th in 2022. Los Angeles and San Francisco rank last and second-to-last in birth rates among 53 major U.S. metros, per Kotkin’s analysis. The state is aging 50% faster than the national average. The international immigration flow that propped up totals is now itself declining — the Trump administration’s termination of humanitarian migration programs cut arrivals roughly in half, per the DOF’s own February 2026 E-2 press release.

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