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The California Department of Finance has released its annual state population report. The Golden State added 335,000 people in 2016, bringing our total population, as of January 1, 2017, to 39,524,000. The department projects that the state will cross the 40 million threshold "sometime in 2018," Bill Schooling, chief of the Demographic Research Unit at the department, told LAist.
How did Los Angeles fare? California's largest city added about 42,000 people (a 1.1 percent gain for the year), bringing our population to 4,041,707 on January 1.
Southern California also listed five of the 10 fastest growing cities with populations of 30,000 or more. Irvine's population grew by 3.9% (to 267,086) from January 1, 2016, to January 1, 2017. Beaumont grew by 3% during the same period. As did Vista, Monrovia, and Santa Clarita.
"Irvine saw big growth due to [single and multi-family] housing construction," Schooling continued. "The Inland Empire, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, saw a return to growth as well."
Schooling also noted that the state now has 14 million housing units—the most in California history. "We're seeing an uptick in housing construction across the state. The most since prior to the recession," Schooling said. But that is not to suggest that L.A.'s (and California's) housing shortage is quenched. "Long term, the average in housing growth versus population growth is inadequate."
Another interesting bit of information from the report: Amador County, which saw the largest percentage population gain, and Kings County, which saw one of the largest population decreases, experienced a prison expansion and closure, respectively
