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Comment by dmode | Hacker News Reader

So, "exodus" is used to define a mere outflow of 60K residents ? That is less than 0.05%. Also, this article makes no sense. If California was losing people for the last 22 years, how come it's population went from 29 million in 1990 to 40 million in 2016 ? I hate how none of these "exodus" articles are data centric and explain these two discrepancies. Is the population growth then due to birth rate ? or due to immigration ? Also, interestingly the same article notes that job growth in Bay Area has been at it's highest point ever

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Yeah, they used outflow numbers for the entire state to "prove" that there's an exodus from the Bay Area. Here's your hint:

"California has seen negative outward migration to other states for 22 of the last 25 years."

Obviously the Bay Area does not have negative outward migration, or the traffic and housing issues would be solved.

Another interesting quote cites a man inexplicably commuting from SF to the East Bay which is not something you'd do if you were trying to optimize your housing costs.

A third cites a woman and her sister moving from The Villages in SJ to Dayton, Ohio. Not mentioned is the fact that The Villages is a retirement community on a golf course (you have to be over 55 to live there).

Ha ha ha. These anecdotes prove the level journalism have fallen due to clickbait. The commute from SF to East Bay is pretty easy during rush hour.

It's immigration. California has had negative net domestic migration for a while. Population growth in the state is driven by immigration.

Don't forget natural growth, i.e. birth.

According to census estimates, California had a natural population increase of 1,332,394 (births - deaths) from April 2010 -- August 2015. In that same period it had a net immigration of 568,884 people, consisting of +834,999 international and -266,115 domestic.

On the other hand, when you look at the San Francisco bay area metropolitan region, you'll see that there's no domestic exodus and a net immigration of 274,598 people over the last five years.

[http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/PEP/2015/PEPT...]

So, yeah, with a little over ~90,000 new people per year in the region, the picture looks very different than the one the article was trying to paint.

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