SACRAMENTO — California’s population fell by more than 182,000 people in 2020, marking the first year-over-year loss ever recorded for the nation’s most populous state. State officials announced Friday that California’s population dipped 0.46% to just under 39.5 million people from January 2020 to January 2021. The news comes one...
California’s Growth Rate at Record Low as More People Leave
California saw its slowest growth rate on record for the nation’s most populous state, adding just 21,200 people during the year that ended in July, state officials said Wednesday. For the second straight year, more people left California than moved to the state, resulting in a net migration loss of...
Closing 8 California Prisons Could Save More Than $1 Billion, Report Says
SACRAMENTO — California, which has a declining prison population, could save more than $1 billion by closing eight lockups, the Legislative Analyst's Office said in a report Thursday. The report said the number of inmates, parolees and juvenile wards is a “major cost driver in spending on the state’s correctional...
Merced, Clovis Among State’s Fastest-Growing Cities
Merced and Clovis cracked the list of 10 fastest-growing cities in California, according to May data from the state Department of Finance. Merced grew at a 2.37% clip in 2019 and now has 88,120 residents. The city ranks sixth in the state in growth percentage. Clovis is the state's 10th...
Borgeas Explains Why He Voted 'No' on SB 50 Housing Bill
SACRAMENTO — Desperate for more housing in the nation's most populous state, the leader of the California Senate committed Thursday to passing a law this year to add more housing in a state facing a shortage of 3.5 million homes. Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins' comments came moments after...
Syrian Troops Capture Key Town in Rebel-Held Idlib Province
DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrian government forces captured one of the largest and most strategic rebel-held towns in the country's northwest, the Syrian military and opposition activists said Wednesday, part of a Russian-backed military assault that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to safer areas. The town of Maaret...
California's Monarch Butterflies Critically Low for 2nd Year
SAN FRANCISCO — The western monarch butterfly population wintering along California's coast remains critically low for the second year in a row, a count by an environmental group released Thursday showed. The count of the orange-and-black insects by the Xerces Society, a nonprofit environmental organization that focuses on the conservation...
Walters: The Politics of Slow Population Growth
During the first decade of the 21st century, demographers in California’s Department of Finance and those in the U.S. Census Bureau found themselves in a genteel conflict. Years by year, the two agencies’ estimates of California’s population diverged, finally reaching a gap of about 1 million human beings. It was...
3 Big Ways That the US Will Change Over the Next Decade
The U.S. has just entered the new decade of the 2020s. What does our country look like today, and what will it look like 10 years from now, on Jan. 1, 2030? Which demographic groups in the U.S. will grow the most, and which groups will not grow as much,...
Walters: New Year, Old Confounding Issues for California
California has always been a basket of contradictions, and as we begin a new year and a new decade, they seem destined to become even more confounding. As 2019 closed, we learned from the state Department of Finance that California, whose population boomed into the nation’s largest thanks to waves...