By Issues & Insights Editorial Board | October 21, 2026
California lost population for the first time in its history a few years back. Some of the loss has been recovered. But there’s been no growth beyond the 2020 peak. Yet Sacramento continues to expand government. The madness will continue until voters realize the mistakes they’ve been making at the ballot box for decades.
America’s largest state topped out at 39.53 million in 2019. That number fell to 39.52 million in 2020, then 39.24 million in 2021 and 39.03 million in 2022. After a few years of growth, the population fell again from 2024 to 2025, is still below its peak, and isn’t expected to grow over three years beginning in 2027.
Given this, shouldn’t the state government decline along a similar line? Yes, it should. But it hasn’t.
California’s state workforce, excluding university employment, grew 4% from 2019 to 2024, the Sacramento Bee reported last year, calling the addition of 20,000 employees “a hiring spree.” The number of both managers (10%) and supervisors (32%) swelled over the same period. A few months back, the Bee noted that compensation had spiraled “by $6 billionsince fiscal year 2019-20.”
The state workforce is at a record high, rising from 9.5 employees per 1,000 residents before Gov. Gavin Newsom took office to 11.1. It bears mentioning that the governor’s “taxpayer-funded team that never stops posting,” which rakes in at least a collective $2.6 million a year, has doubled to 24 since January 2020, one year into his first term, and has not advanced the debate at all.
Of course overall state spending continues to climb, as does state spending per capita, which is more than $8,800. Earlier this year, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office tried to explain why spending has grown $100 billion since 2019‑20. We appreciate the LAO’s help, but we think we know why: California’s dominant political party favors a political society over the civil society that this country was founded to be. Government is the god.
California is not the only state that’s acted irresponsibly for decades. Recklessness is common among the blue states. But California is a special case. It is a trendsetter — and a model of ruinous single-party governance. It’s the state that Democrats across the country want their states to emulate, the one they also want to impress by introducing their own progressive and socialist policies.
California is still the largest state in the U.S., and its economy remains No. 1. But the luster is off because lawmakers, regulators, and bureaucrats have made it less attractive to innovators, workers, and capitalists whose investments make the economy hum. It will likely take years for enough California voters to understand they’re the problem. But most of the rest of the country can still save itself by being more judicious at the ballot box in 13 days.
The midterms aren’t about Donald Trump. They’re about rescuing the nation from the leftist toxin that has poisoned its most important state.
Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists of the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day – without fear or favor.
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