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The home of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and more major league sports teams than anywhere else in the United States has long been a headline-maker for the number of people wanting to leave. A nearly unfathomable occurrence just a handful of decades ago, the California Exodus continued to take its toll into early 2024.
Now, however, there are positive signs that the exodus is over. Buoyed by an influx of incomers, the population of California actually saw a slight rise in 2024. Indeed, CA is back on the rise for the first time in three years. Over those three years, the Golden State was bleeding residents to elsewhere in the US.
While many socio-economic and political factors have played into this, incoming populations are the clearest places to start. One source of the incoming residents could have been guessed given California’s population biases. Another may not be quite so obvious to onlookers.
Leaving Garden for Golden
Census data relays that the population of California boasts the highest percentage of foreign-born residents. This clocks in at over one-quarter of the populace. It’s an impressive figure and one that naturally helped to stop the exodus. A big buoy to CA’s population of late has been legal immigration.
Steadily building up over the last couple of years, being welcoming to people from beyond US borders has enabled California to begin to bounce back. Another influx comes by way of a state that’s probably further away, geographically speaking, than the places of origin for many of the legal immigrants now calling CA home.
In terms of net migration between California and any other state, New Jersey is one of the biggest providers of residents to the Golden State. The Garden State ceded over 13,000 people to CA in 2022. In return, only 7,000 Californians went to the East Coast. That worked out as a net gain of over 6,000 people.
What the New Jerseyans are Trading in
It goes without saying, but New Jersey and California are distinctly different states in just about every way. The cost of living is one thing that stands out. It’s a big reason for the exodus, with the cost of living including rent working out as over 20 percent higher in Los Angeles than in Newark.
From there, the general entertainment scene and what anyone can get up to when out and even at home is drastically different. Since 2018, New Jersey has transformed into a national leader in iGaming. The top NJ online casino houses an extensive games library that spans hit slots like Cash Eruption and even Live Football Studio.
Looking at these kinds of platforms, the range of games, and their mobile accessibility, it’s easy to see why casino gaming is a $200 million per month market in NJ. In California, it’s much more about the novel card rooms for similar spells of entertainment. From there, though, there are way more sports teams and ways to enjoy the movie world in the Golden State.
It probably comes as a surprise, but New Jersey has helped to end the California Exodus. Coupled with the influx of legal residents, the net transfer of New Jerseyans to Californians has benefitted CA’s population greatly.
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