California's population grew less than 1% in the last year, the slowest growth rate in more than a decade and a vivid indicator of the continued toll that the deep recession has taken on the state.
Demographers said the population slowdown was largely attributable to two of the main effects of the recession: high unemployment and the skyrocketing number of home foreclosures.
Hans Johnson, associate director of the Public Policy Institute of California, noted that the state's jobless rate of 12.5% was higher than the national rate of 10.2% and that the gap was even more noticeable when California unemployment was compared with the rates in Texas and Washington, two traditional sources of migrants to California.
Dennis Myers, a state Finance Department economist, said the collapse of the housing market was also a major factor in the slowdown. San Bernardino County, saddled with one of the highest home foreclosure rates in the nation, lost 11,519 residents to out-migration in the last year. The county had been among the fastest-growing in the nation earlier in the decade, gaining 30,000 or more annually. Riverside County, also plagued with a foreclosure crisis, posted its slowest growth rate this decade.
Myers and Johnson said the state historically has grown faster than the nation because of immigration, which has also slowed. California attracted a net increase of 179,493 immigrants in the last year, the second-lowest number this decade.
"There's a sense that California has limited opportunities and a high cost of living," Johnson said.
The slow growth mimics the pattern seen in the last major recession, in the mid-1990s.
Experts said the effect on the state could be mixed.
Dowell Myers, a USC demographer, said the slowdown in growth provided a welcome respite that state policymakers should use to look ahead and plan for the future.
He and others said, for instance, that policymakers must step forward to provide new public investments in the state's crumbling infrastructure. A new study by a transportation research group called TRIP ranked Los Angeles roads as the roughest in the nation, with 92% of major roads in the metro areas in poor or mediocre condition. Deficiencies in roads and other transit systems cost state motorists $40 billion annually because of higher vehicle operating costs, traffic crashes and congestion, the study found.
