California sees its first population rise in years. How do Kern communities stack up?
While not the mushrooming growth of decades past, California can relish in the fact that its population did grow in 2023, the first time in four years.
The governor’s office announced Tuesday the state saw a small bump in its populace — 67,000 people, or about .17% of the population — which reverses a three-year exodus that saw nearly 800,000 people leave California to live elsewhere.
The state estimates California now has more than 39.1 million residents.
“People from across the nation and the globe are coming to the Golden State to pursue the California Dream and experience the success of the world’s 5th largest economy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a statement. “From the Inland Empire to the Bay Area, regions throughout California are growing — strengthening local communities and boosting our state's future.”
According to a report by the state Department of Finance, the curb in population loss is attributed to a rebound in legal immigration and a decline in COVID-19 deaths as the pandemic wanes.
“With immigration processing backlogs largely eliminated and deaths returning to long-term trends, a stable foundation for continued growth has returned,” the report said.
Thirty-one of the state’s 58 counties gained in population, including Kern, which has 1,035 more people now than it did in 2020, a .11% bump, according to state census data.
Among California’s top 10 largest cities, Bakersfield grew the most — by about .8% between 2022 and 2023.
But in the past four years, this growth appears minuscule. The cities of Bakersfield and Delano have only grown by 2% since 2020. In those four years, the city of Ridgecrest has 50 more people living in its city limits, while the city of Wasco has 85 fewer people in the same span of time.
Others haven’t been as fortunate in the new decade. California City has dropped in population by 13% since 2020. The cities of Tehacahpi and Taft fare worse: the former saw a 15% decline in people over the past four years, while nearly one in five people in the latter have since left. State prison inmates are included in the counts, creating bigger population changes.
Once the fastest-growing state in the nation, California saw booming year-to-year jumps that translated to 34 million people by 2000, up from two million in 1900. But the pace of growth has slowed in the new millennium.
Beginning in 2020, the state saw record losses in population, as thousands — fed up with high housing costs, crowds and crime in the larger urban centers — flocked to cheaper, landlocked cities or moved outside the state altogether. The drop led California to lose a Congressional seat in 2021, its first time in history.
The state continues to lose more residents to other states than it gained from them.
But in the city of Shafter, the population continued to rise by healthy bounds, 11.4% since 2021. It was noted among the top cities for housing growth last year, as California added another 116,000 housing units in its desperate push to build more homes.
When asked how this was possible, Chad Givens, the city’s mayor, compared the situation to Disneyland, or rather its home, Anaheim.
Anaheim, Givens explained, is 49 square miles, home to about 340,000 people. In contrast, the city of Shafter is about 40 square miles — the third largest in Kern, behind Bakersfield and California City — home to an estimated 23,000 people, or about 600 people per square mile.
To some, that spells a desert, a humanless heath. To Givens, that’s a clean slate. And thousands of people seem to agree with him.
“We have a lot of opportunities here,” Givens said. “We can build things the way we believe it should be built.”
Shafter expects to see 8,000 new homes in the next decade or so to meet demand.
