San Francisco, Alameda, and Sacramento counties also see gains, but many suburban counties, like Orange in the south and Santa Clara in the Bay Area, see only modest gains up to this point.ġ960 total population: 15,717,204 128% increase since 1940 The post-war boom is perhaps the most significant of all, as the state’s population triples in the latter half of the century.4 California emerges from the Second World War as a center for the aerospace industry, adding to its predominance in intensive agricultural production, media, manufacturing, and petroleum refining. Public works like the Golden Gate and San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridges are completed from 1920 to 1940 to accommodate the influx of residents. Rapid industrialization, including a burgeoning food-processing sector6 and shipbuilding efforts to support the First World War, draw migrants from all over the world to California’s urban centers.ġ940 total population: 6,907,387 102% increase since 1920 The diversifying industrial base of Los Angeles, including the emergence of the film industry, leads to extraordinary growth. Alameda County begins to absorb many new Bay Area residents-including some San Francisco residents displaced by the 1906 earthquake. Note that Imperial County was still a part of San Diego County at this time (it was split off from San Diego and made into its own county in 1907).ġ920 total population: 3,426,861 131% increase since 1900 Los Angeles grows quickly in the first twenty years of the century to overtake San Francisco’s population, aided in part by the completion of the first Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1908. New highways were about augmenting the railroads and sea lanes to open California up to the US and the world, igniting a century-long population boom. At this time, nearly 1 in every 4 Californians lived in the city and county of San Francisco. A Century of Growth: California population (1900 – 2000) Jake Coolidgeġ900 total population: 1,485,053 72% increase since 1880 Having been made a state fifty years earlier, California entered the century with a population comparable to the city of San Diego’s current population. Nonetheless, California’s population is predicted to touch 45 million people by 2050.

Over the past twenty years, California has undergone its slowest growth rates ever registered, and growth has been amazingly slow since 2017. Percent of California-Born residents outside California Reddit user: Biohzd05

state’s population outside of California born in California. The map below shows the percent of each U.S. In turn, many Californians move to other states. It is not surprising that more than ten million Californians are immigrants.

California’s population almost tripled in the last half of the 20th century, and its increase rate continued much higher than that of the rest of the U.S. By 1950 the population had touched ten million. In 1900, California was home to less than two million people. California’s population is larger than that of all but 34 nations of the world. In the Western hemisphere, California is the 2nd-most populated sub-national administrative entity (after the Brazilian state of São Paulo) and the 3rd most populated sub-national entity of any sort outside Asia. The United States split into sections that have the same population as California In terms of population in the United States, Texas ranks second (~29 million), while Florida is third (~21 million). California is the country’s most populated state, with nearly forty million people.