SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A new report from the Public Policy Institute of California said the state is losing more residents than it is attracting from other states. The top reasons? Employment and housing.

PPIC said since 2001, California has lost more residents than it has gained to other states.

“During the height of the pandemic, the flows out of the state became so large that almost every demographic and socioeconomic group experienced net losses,” the report said.

The nonpartisan research institute said the trends demand a “resolution if the state is to be a place of opportunity for all of its residents.”

So who is leaving California?

Most notably from the report has been the departure of lower-income adults, with a net loss of 532,000 individuals over the past 10 years, more than 10% of California’s of lower-income adult population.

The migration away from the Golden State is because of an array of factors including employment, housing or family. But since 2015, housing costs have been one of the biggest reasons reported for leaving.

About 34% of Californians have seriously considered leaving the state because of high housing costs and 21% have thought of leaving because of the lack of well-paying jobs, according to the statewide survey.

Those who do leave the state have found their greener pastures. About half of those who left reported buying a house. Only one-third of those moving to California were able to do so.

College graduates and higher-income households have been leaving the state in dramatic numbers since the pandemic, according to the PPIC report.

According to the data, losses of college graduates and higher-income households are likely related to the ability to work from home.

In California, about two-thirds of the almost 3 million residents who telework full-time have at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Surveys.

“Over half of higher-income Californians leaving the state during the pandemic reported working from home. While that share has declined somewhat in recent years, the share remains far higher than prior to the pandemic,” the report said.

While the political landscape of California is more complicated than the liberal haven the state is often depicted as, partisan divide is also a factor in who chooses to leave the Golden State.

A PPIC report from July 2025 said voters who left the state between the 2020 and 2024 elections were disproportionately Republican compared to California’s overall population.

“Because more registrants have moved out than in during this period, the net flow is even more Republican than these numbers suggest. Between these two elections, almost five times as many Republicans in the data have moved out of California than have moved in,” the report said.

And Republican voters leaving California are headed to more conservative states.

“This partisan sorting is strong enough that it makes the Republican destination states even more Republican — and the Democratic states more Democratic — than they already are,” the report said.

The reverse is also true: The new residents coming to California are more Democratic.

“This process makes California more Democratic than it would otherwise be, as Republicans leave for other states and Democrats move in,” PPIC said.

Hans Johnson is a demographer for PPIC. He said the institute hopes to do a report on the more granular data about these population trends.

But Johnson said the state’s biggest migration is coming from the large metropolitan areas. But the capital city doesn’t quite follow that trend.

“Generally, Sacramento tends to attract people from other places in the state — the Bay Area, certainly. But, like the larger trend, it tends to lose people to other states,” Johnson said.

That plays out in data from the California Department of Finance, which is what informed PPIC’s report.

From 2020 to 2025, Sacramento County grew by nearly 1.5%. Los Angeles County and San Francisco counties both saw total population losses over the same time period, 1.5% and 2.9%, respectively.

Other Central Valley counties also saw their total populations grow. Stanislaus County was largely stagnant, but still grew by 0.5%. Fresno County grew by 2.8% and Modesto County nearly doubled Fresno, with a 4.2% growth over five years.

San Luis Obispo County followed a trend Johnson flagged for coastal counties. Its population decreased by 1.2% from 2020 to 2025.

©2026 The Sacramento Bee. Visit sacbee.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.