For the third year in a row, California saw its population drop, raising new concerns about how the much-discussed exodus could hurt the state’s political influence.
The state’s population declined by around 37,000 people from July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2023, or 0.1%. The loss is minuscule compared with the more than 500,000 people the state lost from April 2020 to July 2022. But it still represents the sixth-largest rate of loss of any state during that time span.
Prior to the fiscal year from July 1, 2020, to July 1, 2021, California had never seen even one year of population decline since 1900, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.