For the third year in a row, California’s population has declined. The population decline in 2020 which started this new trend was the first time ever in the history of the state.

Well, the state’s population dipped yet again in 2022, for the third year in a row. The number of people living in California fell by 138,443 last year, to 38.94 million, according to state data released this week.

Several trends that were made worse by the pandemic are contributing to the decline: a higher-than-normal death rate, a falling birthrate, a drop in international migration and a flow of Californians moving to other states…

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.

As mentioned, one of the factors in the decline in 2020 was the drop in international migration during the pandemic. Those numbers are almost back to their pre-pandemic levels which means the rate of decline has slowed compared to last year.

California’s foreign immigration nearly tripled in 2022 compared to 2021, bringing in a net of more than 90,000 people, almost back to pre-pandemic immigration levels. But those gains were offset by continued domestic out-migration in 2022, likely due to the rise of working from home, the finance department said.

Los Angeles lost about 36,000 people but that was only 1% of the city’s total population. The two cities who lost the highest percentage of their population were Anaheim and Santa Ana, both located in Orange County.

San Francisco saw another decline but it was smaller than last year.

In 2022, population shrank in all four of California’s biggest cities, including San Francisco, which saw a 0.6% decline, to an estimated 831,703 people. That’s less of a drop than last year, when San Francisco saw a 0.8% decline…

In the Bay Area, Santa Cruz, Marin and Napa all shrank by about 1%, while Alameda, Solano and Sonoma lost 0.5%. San Mateo and Contra Costa shrank 0.4%. Santa Clara shrank .3%.

These are of course net figures. In a separate story yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out that it tends to be wealthier people leaving the city with less wealthy people replacing them.

The 148,000 residents who left San Francisco by the time they filed tax returns in 2020 and 2021 collectively made about $22.7 billion, for an average annual income of about $153,000.

That’s a higher average than the people who moved to San Francisco during that period. Those roughly 77,000 residents were parts of households that made about $7.9 billion, or an average of $103,000 a person.

San Francisco doesn’t have a personal income tax so this won’t directly impact the city’s budget but obviously having less money in the city’s economy will have indirect impacts on things like property taxes and business taxes which the city does rely on.

Finally, California and Texas are often contrasted as large states with two different models. Texas’ population grew again last year, surpassing 30 million for the first time:

Texas is now one of only two U.S. states with a population of 30 million or more: the nation’s second-most-populous state reached a population milestone by passing the 30-million threshold…

The population of Texas, the largest in land area among the Lower 48 states, increased by 470,708 in 2022, continuing a steady uptick. From 2000 to 2022, the state gained 9,085,073 residents, more than any other state and almost 3 million more than Florida, the next largest-gaining state.

That’s a 43% jump, which made Texas the fourth fastest-growing state in the country, behind Nevada, Utah, and Idaho.

People vote with their feet and just because California has a long history of growth doesn’t mean that trend will continue.