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California’s population grew by almost a quarter of a million residents this year, nearly bouncing back to the record-high population levels the Golden State had reached before the pandemic, though the state is growing more slowly than the country as a whole and other large states in the South, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday.
“As the nation’s population surpasses 340 million, this is the fastest annual population growth the nation has seen since 2001,” the Census Bureau wrote in a statement. “The growth was primarily driven by rising net international migration.”
After consistent population growth through the 2010s, California’s population peaked at 39,556,000, according to the 2020 decennial census, before losing nearly 1% of its population by July 1, 2021, amid pandemic restrictions.
Between 2020 and 2022, the so-called California exodus had significant impacts on the state. In 2021 the state lost one congressional representative, dipping from 53 to 52 seats in the House of Representatives. Critics of the state’s leadership had cited crime rates, high taxes and high property costs as reasons residents fled to other less regulated states, including Texas and Florida.
The Census Bureau’s Vintage 2024 population estimates show California’s population on July 1, 2024, was 39,431,000, an increase of 233,000 from the year before and just 125,000 short of the 2020 high. Revised figures also show a population increase in 2023.
For Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, there are two ways to look at the new data.
“There’s the optimistic look that in the past year, we have seen the population increase … bigger increases than we have in a decade, so I do think there is some truth to the narrative of folks coming back to California,” he said.
On the other hand, California is still far behind the population gains made in Florida and Texas over the past half decade.
“We are still trying to claw back to where we were pre-pandemic,” Bellisario said. “It’s going to take us a few more years to get to solid population growth numbers.”
California had the third most new residents, with the population growing by about 0.59% from July 1, 2023, to Jul 1, 2024. Florida and Texas notched more new residents and top the list of states with the largest increases by raw numbers.
The District of Columbia had the largest percent increase, with 2.2% more residents in 2024. Following Florida and Texas, Utah and South Carolina round out the list of places with the five largest percent increases in their population, all with at least 1.7% more residents than 2023.
Overall, the population of the whole country grew by about 0.9%, slightly outpacing California’s growth. There were an estimated 3.3 million more United States residents in 2024, reaching just over 340 million.
Between the decennial census population counts, the agency releases estimates on July 1 of each year, recording natural population change, such as births and deaths, and then factoring in migration to calculate what it calls the Vintage estimates. And each year the estimates for previous years in that decade are revised based on new information.
For the first time this year since 2020, California’s net migration returned to the positive, according to the data the census bureau calculates, spurred by slight decreases in the number of residents the state loses to other states each year and a continued increase in net international migration.
This new census data affirms data released earlier this year from the California Department of Finance, which also showed a reverse of the California exodus. Data from the state’s demographics professionals estimated more residents on Jan. 1, 2024, than the previous year, the first year of gains since before the pandemic.
With this year’s update, the Census is catching up to what the state data already hinted at. Last year’s Census update showed another year with slight population decreases in California. But the Census revised the 2023 population as part of this year’s update, which showed a slight increase from 2022 to 2023. The revision makes 2024 the second consecutive year of population growth for the state.
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