4 ms·

It seems like much of this comes from the shift to remote work. Many Californians didn't really want to be here but moved in order to be part of the biggest co

It seems like much of this comes from the shift to remote work. Many Californians didn't really want to be here but moved in order to be part of the biggest commercial developments of the day. Now a California location is no longer necessarily forced on people. This could be good for everyone.

bobbean 3y ago
That doesn't make any sense. You really think remote tech jobs are the leading cause of this population decline in a state of 39 million people?
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  Remote work (which isn’t just tech, though perhaps more in tech) is a factor, both in people being able to move out and in people not moving in. Probably an exaggeration to call it the leading cause, though, curtailment of immigration and accelerated retirements compounding the existing trend of taking retirement savings to move somewhere lower CoL are big factors.
kitsunesoba 3y ago
Some number of us who left would've preferred to continue living there, but it can be difficult to justify that if you're trying to not spend a majority of your income on housing. In my case, as a remote worker it was hard to say no to a house twice the size of my old apartment for a mortgage payment half of what my rent was. The only tradeoff was more rainy days, since I moved to a metro in the PNW. Had housing prices been more reasonable in the parts of California where people want to live, I wouldn't have had any issue staying. It was nice.
- BobbyJo 3y ago
  Maybe it's rose colored glasses, but 2013 Bay Area was so much nicer than 2023 Bay Area, and the cost of living, while high, wasn't nonsensical like now. I was glad to move in, and glad to move out.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> It seems like much of this comes from the shift to remote work. A lot of it, as in 2020, came from the reduction in immigration to the United States (2020 and 2021 were about 300k below any time in the prior decade, due to pandemic-related restrictions. California has had negative net domestic (within the US) migration offset by international immigration, for which it is a major destination for both employment- and family-based immigration, for quite a long time prior to 2020. Another big chunk is retirements (which in 2020 and 2021 were accelerated by the pandemic); taking savings from working in California and retiring out of state to a lower CoL area has been common for a long time.

bobbean 3y ago

That doesn't make any sense. You really think remote tech jobs are the leading cause of this population decline in a state of 39 million people?

dragonwriter 3y ago
Remote work (which isn’t just tech, though perhaps more in tech) is a factor, both in people being able to move out and in people not moving in. Probably an exaggeration to call it the leading cause, though, curtailment of immigration and accelerated retirements compounding the existing trend of taking retirement savings to move somewhere lower CoL are big factors.

kitsunesoba 3y ago

Some number of us who left would've preferred to continue living there, but it can be difficult to justify that if you're trying to not spend a majority of your income on housing. In my case, as a remote worker it was hard to say no to a house twice the size of my old apartment for a mortgage payment half of what my rent was. The only tradeoff was more rainy days, since I moved to a metro in the PNW. Had housing prices been more reasonable in the parts of California where people want to live, I wouldn't have had any issue staying. It was nice.

BobbyJo 3y ago
Maybe it's rose colored glasses, but 2013 Bay Area was so much nicer than 2023 Bay Area, and the cost of living, while high, wasn't nonsensical like now. I was glad to move in, and glad to move out.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> It seems like much of this comes from the shift to remote work. A lot of it, as in 2020, came from the reduction in immigration to the United States (2020 and 2021 were about 300k below any time in the prior decade, due to pandemic-related restrictions. California has had negative net domestic (within the US) migration offset by international immigration, for which it is a major destination for both employment- and family-based immigration, for quite a long time prior to 2020. Another big chunk is retirements (which in 2020 and 2021 were accelerated by the pandemic); taking savings from working in California and retiring out of state to a lower CoL area has been common for a long time.