For a copy of a report I wrote which examines this issue more in-depth, see below:
For this week’s special topics post (for recent followers: that’s what Fridays are normally reserved for), I wanted to revisit the topic of migration. We all know that the rising cost of living has pushed many out of California. It’s not even necessarily about taxes or the general price of goods and services – in many cases, it is quite specifically about housing, which makes sense since housing costs represent about 40% of the typical California resident’s budget.
Last Friday was a big day for data nerds – IPUMS announced the release of its 2021 American Community Survey (ACS) microdata files. The ACS is a nationwide representative survey of over 3 million Americans and offers an unparalleled look into all sorts of issues facing households today.
The ACS microdata allow one to look at who left California (and who came in) at an incredible amount of detail. For example – as will be done here – we can examine California migrants by their educational attainment. Combined with the sample weights, we can obtain solid estimates of the total number of such individuals.
In 2021, I estimate that about 540,747 individuals aged 25 or older left California in 2021, while 267,692 came in from other states (that number rises to 378,287 if foreign immigrants are included). Thus, California migration patterns generated a net loss of about 162,460 people in 2021. This in itself may be striking to some, but it is in fact part of a well-known trend of rising out-migration over the last 10 years.
Breaking the patterns down by educational attainment, you can see in the table below that California had a net loss of almost all major educational attainment groups (“less than HS” and “some college” are left out of this table). Particularly surprising is the net loss of Bachelor’s and Master’s/Professional degree earners, which are an important part of the state’s middle and upper classes – and this is after including migrants into California from foreign countries. California is even losing its higher educated workers to other states, causing a “brain drain”.
What about the Inland Empire? In 2021, I estimate 249,396 people left the two-county region while 266,848 came into it, both from other counties in California and from other states (the inclusion of intercounty migrants is why these counts are much higher than the interstate counts for California as a whole). Moreover, there were net positives at almost every level of educational attainment, including Bachelor’s and Master’s/Professional degree earners. There was a slight negative net migration of doctoral degree holders in the region, but this difference is probably not significant given small sample sizes.
While these results are certainly something to celebrate (yes! The I.E. can attract higher educated workers!), the numbers over time point toward increased outmigration, not increased in-migration. In other words, while the region sits in a decent place for now, our housing policy must do more to stop veering off the track and, more importantly, reverse course.