LA lost more people than any other big US county during height of pandemic

Los Angeles County lost more people during the height of the pandemic – residents who moved or died of COVID-19 – than any big county in the country, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Though some neighboring areas fared better, the sharp decline in the nation’s most populous county led to a regional population collapse last seen in Southern California during the aerospace crash of the early 1990s.

In all, the head count in Los Angeles County shrunk 2.9% during a 27-month window, from slightly more than 10 million on April 1, 2020, about the time the first wave of COVID-19 deaths were making news, to a population of just over 9.7 million on July 1, 2022, when the pandemic was less dire.

While some people who moved may have landed nearby, as the census shows county populations in the Inland Empire grew or held steady, the pandemic-era flight from Los Angeles, and a smaller drop-off in Orange County, prompted a broad contraction in the combined population of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, a 1.4% dip to just over 17.5 million.

In raw numbers, the four-county region lost about 9,666 residents a month during the 27-month window tracked in the census report.

The Southern California decline was in line with the state – which lost about 1.2% of its population during the period covered in the census survey – but ran counter to the broad national trend, which saw the national head count grow by 0.8% during the 24 months that ended Dec. 31, 2022, according to census data.

Other local, pandemic-era population shifts included:

• Orange County contracted by 1.1%, to 3.151 million.

• San Bernardino County held flat, gaining 0.5%, to 2.193 million.

• Riverside County grew 2.3%, to 2.473 million.

Such population shifts, if they continue to play out after the pandemic – something state experts and others currently forecast as unlikely – could have long-term financial consequences.

Political representation, in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., is based on population. Same for federal allocations of money used for everything from freeway construction and schools to health care and federal courthouses.

And though a growing population often reflects a region’s economic health, a population decline can reflect, or even contribute to, the opposite. Innovation tends to lag in communities where more people are leaving, and labor shortages can prevent companies from starting up or expanding in a given area.

“The big picture is that Southern California’s growth is changing,” said Darin Chidsey, chief operating officer for the Southern California Association of Governments, a planning association that, among other things, tracks local population changes.

“While some of what we’ve seen during the past two years is on track with what we’ve seen over 20 years or so, COVID changed that.”

Pandemic deaths played a moderate role in the recent decline. Health agencies in the four counties reported that about 58,000 people died of COVID-19 during the 27-month window tracked in the census report, accounting for roughly 1 in 6 people no longer living in the four-county region.

But experts said other factors were more important. What’s more, they pointed out that two key trends that hinder population growth – fewer native births and a decline in international immigration – were evident locally prior to 2020, and amplified during the health crisis.

The birth rate in much of Southern California has fallen in recent years to about 1.3 children per woman, well below the 2.1 average that typically is seen as enough to sustain a native population. And during the first year of the pandemic international immigration into the region was off by as much as 50%, according to state and federal reports.

“There’s nuance to some of this data, but some parts of Southern California have been losing more residents than they’ve gained since 2001,” Chidsey said.

Census data shows that’s been true in isolated areas. But it also shows that, pre-pandemic, the long-term trend in all four counties was growth.

For example, while the census shows that Los Angeles County’s population peaked in 2017, and declined slightly in the last two years of the decade, it also shows the county’s population rose 1.7% between 2010 and 2020. A similar trend was evident in Orange County, where growth for the decade was about 1% despite a two-year decline at the end of the decade. And in the Inland part of the region, the decade prior to the pandemic was a time of moderate to rapid population growth; Riverside County grew by 10% and San Bernardino County grew by 7%.

Those trends – and the recent numbers that showed higher-priced counties shrinking and lower-priced counties gaining – suggest a big part of the exodus is about money; specifically, housing costs.

Chidsey, among others, noted that people who left Southern California prior to and during the pandemic have said they did so because they can’t afford a home in California.

The census data suggests that continued during the pandemic, as higher-priced big counties, such as Los Angeles County and Cook County, Illinois, saw population declines, while lower-cost housing markets, such as Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston, saw the biggest population gains.

Such long-standing trends are why the state continues to push cities and counties to allow development of more affordable housing, particularly in higher-priced markets such as Los Angeles and Orange counties.

“Every city and county needs to do their part to bring down the high housing and rent costs that are impacting families across this state,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an April 10 press release aimed at pushing city of Huntington Beach to allow more affordable housing.

Chidsey said such efforts are starting to pay off.

“For the first time, projections for affordable housing coming online are about 2.5% higher than expected,” Chidsey said. “It’s starting to resonate. If you have housing, and you have jobs – which this area has – you’ll have growth.”

But other factors that rose specifically during the pandemic also contributed to the recent exodus. Remote work, for example, appears to have prompted more people to leave Southern California – at least during the first year of the pandemic – than move into it.

“I don’t think we have hard evidence, right now, but we know a lot of people who left the state were allowed to keep their jobs,” Chidsey said.

Census experts and others suggested the downturn in Southern California, and elsewhere, might be ebbing.

“We’ve already started to see (population changes) level off quite a bit. Outmigration from Southern California is down by about 70%. When you start to pencil it in, the question is how fast will the other factors change.”

And federal data does suggest that population shifts in counties around the country either slowed or reversed during the second year of the pandemic.

In mid-sized San Francisco County, for example, the population shrunk by 7% during the 27 months tracked in the latest census report, but 6.8% of that drop happened in the first year. The census report also noted that many smaller and mid-sized counties that include colleges saw their populations rebound last year, as in-person classes resumed and students returned to campuses.

“The migration and growth patterns for counties edged closer to pre-pandemic levels this year,” said Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for estimates and projections with the U.S. Census Bureau’s population division.

Long term, the state still envisions long-term population growth for the four-county region.

The California Department of Finance projects that Los Angeles and Orange counties will continue to grow until the mid-to-late 2030s, and then shrink gradually in the years after that. The state projects both Riverside and San Bernardino counties to continue growing at a rapid clip until at least the middle of the century, with Riverside County eventually likely to be about as big as Orange County.

Chedsey said other signs indicate a general shift in population. People moving into California tend to be younger and better educated than the people leaving. They also tend to come with jobs in hand, and sometimes money to invest in a house.

While that might sound desirable on the surface, it’s also problematic. Chidsey described the pandemic-era population decline as “a big blip, but a blip,” but he added that it hints at future challenges of keeping a population that’s growing and economically balanced.

“The people who’ve grown up and raised families in Southern California want their children to stay close to home,” he said.

“But if we don’t address the challenges for people to stay here, to buy houses here, we’re driving a gap between the wealthy and everybody else even wider.”