I still remember the first time I paid California rent that was more than my parents’ mortgage back in Ohio. It was 2017, a one-bedroom in San Jose for $2,950, and I laughed actually laughed because the only other option was to cry. Fast-forward to 2025 and that same apartment is pushing $3,800 while my salary has barely budged 20 %. I’m not special. I’m just one of the 239,575 people who packed a U-Haul (or wished they could) between July 2023 and July 2024. That’s the biggest domestic out-migration of any state in America again.
California isn’t just losing people anymore; it’s hemorrhaging them. And the reasons all boil down to one brutal truth: for a whole lot of us, the math no longer works. Here are the five biggest reasons families, tech bros, retirees, and lifelong locals are finally saying “enough” and pointing the moving truck east (or north, or south anywhere but here).
1. California Lost More Residents Than Any Other State – By a Lot
The numbers hit like a gut punch. Between 2023 and 2024, California said goodbye to a net 239,575 domestic migrants. That’s not a slowdown; that’s the biggest exodus in the country for the fourth year running. Texas, meanwhile, welcomed 85,000+ new residents in the same window. Florida, Arizona, North Carolina they’re all eating our lunch. Even the moving companies have stopped pretending: Allied Van Lines reported only 41 % of their California moves were inbound last year. Translation? Six out of every ten trucks on the 405 are pointed out of state. This isn’t a blip. It’s a stampede.
Five Stats That Prove the Exodus Is Real
- Net domestic loss 2023–2024: –239,575 (worst in America)
- Texas net gain same period: +85,267
- California’s inbound/outbound ratio in 2023: 41.1 % in, 58.9 % out
- Four straight years as the #1 state people are fleeing
- More people left California than live in the entire city of Anaheim
2. The Overall Cost of Living Is Straight-Up Punishing
You’ve heard the jokes about $18 avocado toast and $7 gas, but the real story is quieter and more brutal. California isn’t just expensive it’s one of the five priciest places in the entire country to simply exist. Groceries, childcare, car insurance, healthcare, electricity pick any category and we’re bleeding money. Missouri’s Economic Research crew ranks us fourth nationally (behind only Hawaii, D.C., and Massachusetts). When your paycheck disappears before the 10th of the month no matter how much you make, eventually you start googling “cost of living in Boise.”
Everyday Expenses That Make You Question Your Life Choices
- Overall cost-of-living index: 4th highest in the U.S.
- Average monthly utilities (power, water, internet, etc.): $438 and climbing
- Groceries for a family of four: routinely 25–40 % above national average
- Car insurance: highest in the nation (thanks, traffic and theft rates)
- The moment you realize a carton of eggs in Dallas costs what a latte does in SF
3. You Can’t Buy a House Unless You’re Already Rich (or Inherited One)
Let’s not sugarcoat it: the median home in California sold for $831,300 last year. That’s almost double the national median of $430,000. In the Bay Area and Greater L.A., “starter homes” are million-dollar tear-downs built in 1952. Redfin says prices went up another 4.7 % year-over-year like we needed the extra kick while we were down. For context, the average single-family house here costs 216 % more than the typical U.S. home. Even tech workers making $200k are getting outbid by all-cash offers from private-equity funds.
The Housing Numbers That Break Californians
- Statewide median sale price (2024): $831,300
- National median for comparison: $430,010
- Average Bay Area home: comfortably over $1.2 million
- Typical down payment needed for median home: $166,000+ (good luck saving that on rent)
- Months of inventory: still under two meaning it’s a seller’s paradise, buyer’s nightmare
4. Even Six-Figure Salaries Don’t Stretch Far Enough Anymore
Here’s the cruel twist: Californians actually earn about 22 % more than the average American. Sounds great until you realize we have the second-worst income-to-home-value ratio in the country. Translation? Our fat paychecks buy less house than almost anywhere else. The rule of thumb says housing should be 30 % of your income. In California that would require earning roughly $280,000 a year to comfortably afford the median home. Most doctors and engineers I know still can’t swing it without help from the Bank of Mom & Dad.
The Income-vs-Reality Gut Check
- Median California household income: ~$91,000 (nice on paper)
- Income needed to afford median home (30 % rule): ~$280,000
- State ranking for income-to-home-value ratio: 49th out of 50
- Percentage of income eaten by housing for the typical buyer: 45–60 %
- The exact moment a $180k software engineer realizes they’re “house poor” in a 900 sq ft condo
5. Renting Isn’t Salvation – It’s Just Slow Financial Suicide
If buying is impossible, renting should be the lifeline, right? Wrong. The average rent statewide is $2,795 a month. A decent one-bedroom in any metro area starts at $2,200 and climbs fast. Two-bedrooms average $2,800, three-bedrooms push $3,700. That’s before utilities, before groceries, before the $600 you’ll drop just to park your car. Landlords know they have the upper hand; applications routinely have 50+ competitors and “income must be 3× rent” rules that laugh at most salaries.
Rental Reality in 2025 California
- Statewide average rent: $2,795/month
- One-bedroom median: $2,158 (and that’s the “deal”)
- Two-bedroom median: $2,800–$3,200 depending on city
- Three-bedroom family-sized units: $3,695 and up
- Percentage of renters spending >40 % of income on housing: over 60 % in coastal counties
6. Utilities, Taxes, and Gas That Feel Like a Second Rent Payment
Every month I open my SDG&E bill and have a small out-of-body experience. $400+ in the summer just to keep the AC from turning my apartment into a sauna. That’s not an outlier anymore. California now has the 19th-most-expensive utilities in the country, and when you add the nation’s highest state income tax (13.3 % if you make decent money), the highest base sales tax (7.25 %), and gas that’s still hovering near $5 a gallon even when the rest of the country is under $3.50, it feels like the state is reaching into your wallet from every possible angle. A six-figure income starts looking like $68k after Sacramento takes its cut.
Five Monthly Hits That Make People Snap
- Average total utilities: $438 (19th highest nationally)
- Top marginal income tax: 13.3 % – highest in America
- Gas tax + prices: routinely $1.50–$2.00/gallon above national average
- Average electric bill in summer: $250–$500 depending on where you live
- The moment you realize the top 20 % of earners pay 91 % of the state’s income tax and a lot of them just left
7. Jobs Are Growing… Just Not Here (And Not Fast Enough)
California’s job-growth rate in 2024–2025 clocked in at 1.79 %. The rest of the country? 1.86 %. That tiny gap is actually huge when your rent goes up 8–12 % a year. Tech still pays well if you’re in the right niche, but entire industries (retail, hospitality, mid-level management) have seen wages stagnate while the cost of living sprints ahead. Meanwhile, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and North Carolina are adding jobs at double or triple the rate and without state income tax. A senior software engineer friend just took a 12 % pay cut to move to Austin. He’s saving $2,800 a month anyway.
The Job Math That’s Driving People Out
- California job growth 2024–2025: 1.79 % (below national average)
- States like Texas and Florida: 3–5 % annual growth in many sectors
- Remote workers who used to tolerate Bay Area rent: now free to live anywhere
- Corporate HQ relocations since 2018: 352 and counting (Oracle, Tesla, etc.)
- Net effect: high-paying jobs are literally moving with the people
8. Companies Are Voting With Their Moving Trucks
It’s not just people entire companies are bailing. The Hoover Institution counted 352 headquarters that left California between 2018 and 2021, and the pace hasn’t slowed much since. Tesla famously dragged Elon and its HQ to Austin. Oracle, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Charles Schwab, Palantir, and dozens more followed. Why? Lower taxes, cheaper real estate, fewer regulations, and talent that’s tired of paying $4,000 a month to sleep in a 400-square-foot studio. When the jobs leave, the people who still want those jobs have to follow.
Five Big-Name Exits That Shook California
- Tesla: Austin, Texas (2021)
- Oracle: Austin, Texas (2020)
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Spring, Texas (2021)
- Charles Schwab: Westlake, Texas (2020)
- Total HQ losses since 2018: 352+ and the list keeps growing
9. Nobody’s Having Kids Anymore – And the Ones We Do Have Are Leaving
California’s fertility rate collapsed from 2.15 in 2008 to 1.52 in 2020 one of the lowest in the country. Young people look at $3,500 a month for a two-bedroom, $2,500 a month for daycare, and decide the math on a family doesn’t work. The ones who do have kids often leave before the kids hit kindergarten. Births barely outpace deaths now, and the natural increase that used to prop up our population is basically gone. Without international immigration (which still hasn’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels), the state is shrinking from the inside out.
The Demographic Collapse in Plain Numbers
- Fertility rate 2020: 1.52 (7th lowest in U.S.)
- Drop since 2008: from 2.15 down to replacement level and below
- Natural increase (births minus deaths): now razor-thin
- International migration recovery: “nowhere near” pre-COVID levels (PPIC)
- Result: an aging population with fewer workers to support it
10. The Pandemic Broke the Spell – And Remote Work Sealed the Deal
COVID did something no recession ever managed: it proved millions of Californians could do their jobs from literally anywhere. When the office closed and Zoom became the new water cooler, the only thing tethering people here was inertia and $3,000 rent snapped that tether fast. Add in a 19 % spike in deaths in 2020, closed immigration pipelines, and a governor who kept schools shuttered longer than almost anywhere else, and you had the perfect push. People realized they could keep their Bay Area salary, pay $1,200 for a mortgage in Boise or Raleigh, and still see their kids before bedtime. Game over.
How One Virus Rewrote California’s Future
- Excess deaths in 2020: +19 % statewide
- International arrivals: basically zero for 18 months
- Remote-capable workers who left 2020–2023: hundreds of thousands
- Most common post-COVID relocation: same job, half the housing cost
- The realization that “I only stayed for the job” was no longer true
11. Politics Is the Cherry on Top – Not the Main Reason, But It’s Definitely a Reason
Let’s be honest: most people don’t load a U-Haul because of a single ballot measure. Two-thirds of California leavers say politics wasn’t the primary driver. But when I talk to friends who moved to Idaho, Texas, or Florida, every single one brings up the same stuff eventually: the feeling that the state government is completely out of touch with their day-to-day struggles. One-quarter of ex-Californians openly admit politics played a role, and in places like Idaho, 75 % of the new arrivals from CA register Republican (compared to just 10 % Democrat). It’s not the main engine of the exodus, but it’s the wind at a lot of people’s backs.
Five Political Flashpoints That Pushed People Over the Edge
- Gas taxes and car-registration fees that keep climbing while roads stay broken
- School closures that lasted longer than almost anywhere else in the country
- Proposition 47 and the visible explosion of retail theft most people feel went unaddressed
- A perception that new laws keep piling costs onto middle-class families while promising benefits that never seem to arrive
- The growing sense that if you’re not in the top 5 % or the bottom 20 %, Sacramento forgot you exist
12. The Rich Are Leaving – And They Take 91 % of the Income-Tax Money With Them
California’s budget is insanely top-heavy. The top 20 % of earners households making $120k+ pay 91 % of the state’s income tax. When even a few thousand of them leave, the math gets ugly fast. We’re already staring at a deficit in the tens of billions, and every tech couple who cashes out their RSUs and moves to Austin or Miami is another seven-figure hole in the budget. Politicians can talk about taxing corporations more, but corporations are leaving too. At some point you run out of other people’s money.
The Fiscal Time Bomb in Plain Sight
- Top 20 % of earners → 91 % of state income-tax revenue
- Current budget deficit: $30–70 billion (depending on whose forecast you believe)
- Projected loss of two more U.S. House seats after 2030 census
- Property-tax revenue growth slowing as high earners sell and leave
- The quiet panic in Sacramento when another $400k+ earner updates their address to Texas
13. We’re Not Building Enough Homes – And Everyone Knows Why
Everyone agrees we need more housing. Governor Newsom set a 2.5-million-unit goal. Reality check: in 2023 we built fewer homes than the year before. Why? Sky-high land costs, endless environmental reviews, neighbors who sue over shadows, and local cities that would literally rather go bankrupt than approve an apartment building. CEQA lawsuits, prevailing-wage rules, and “neighborhood character” objections turn a five-year project into a fifteen-year nightmare. Prices and rents keep rising because supply is strangled, and the people who could fix it are too busy fighting each other to actually build anything.
The Housing Supply Disaster in Five Bullets
- 2023 new-home construction: lower than 2022
- Units needed just to keep up with demand: ~180,000/year
- Units actually permitted most years: under 100,000
- Average time to get a project approved in coastal cities: 7–10 years
- Result: chronic shortage → permanent price spiral → more people priced out
14. The Big Question: Can California Turn This Around – Or Is the Exodus Baked In?
Some optimists point to a tiny uptick in international migration and say the bleeding might slow. But the underlying math hasn’t changed: housing is still unaffordable, taxes are still sky-high, schools are still under pressure, and every year another wave of thirty-somethings does the calculator test and realizes they can buy a bigger house, pay zero state income tax, and still have money left for vacations if they just move. Until Sacramento admits that making life punishingly expensive for the middle and upper-middle class has consequences, the U-Hauls will keep rolling east on I-10 and I-80. California will still be beautiful. It just might end up a lot emptier.
Five Things That Could Actually Stop the Bleed (But Probably Won’t Happen Fast Enough)
- Massive overhaul of CEQA to speed up housing construction
- Real property-tax reform that stops punishing new development
- A serious pause on new taxes and regulations for five years
- Aggressive vocational and university incentives to keep the next generation here
- Leadership willing to admit the current path is unsustainable before the tax base collapses
The Golden State isn’t dying tomorrow. But for the first time in my life, it feels like it’s on life support and a lot of us who grew up worshipping the California dream are the ones pulling the plug, one moving truck at a time.
