California’s population is dropping, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data. However, its impact on the Las Vegas Valley’s economy and population is a complicated one, according to one of UNLV’s top demographic experts.

California was one of only five states that saw a population decline from July 2024 to July 2025. Nevada’s population growth has also slowed since a bump during the pandemic and its overall growth is well below pre-pandemic norms, according to the census.

Andrew Woods, the director of UNLV’s Center for Business and Economic Research, said before the pandemic, a lot of Las Vegas’ population growth was domestic migration, largely from California and other states including Illinois, Arizona, Texas and Utah. However, after the pandemic, a big part of the valley’s growth has been international migration from Asia and Southeast Asia, and the Philippines, specifically.

“So from a California perspective,” said Woods, “(that growth to Las Vegas) has not been what it has been in the last couple of years.”

Woods said California’s population drop isn’t a cut-and-dry case for Las Vegas’ population, or its economic outlook either. He said while home prices may go up if more Californians move here, the opposite is true if California’s economy is floundering as they are a big driver of tourism to the casino and gaming industry on the Strip.

“It’s not an either/or situation where if they are suffering, we’re prospering,” he said. “It’s really, when they are prospering, so are we. Partially why you did see some surge after the pandemic was because their homes prices were going up. So they could sell their home for a high margin and then they were able to move to Nevada and yes that puts upward pressure on our home prices which hurts domestic workers here.”

Home prices in Southern Nevada set record highs last year, despite being one of the worst years on record for sales. Other Sun Belt cities have seen substantial home price drops this year; however, Las Vegas home prices refuse to budge despite a flood of new listings coming onto the market, according to Redfin.

Woods said luxury real estate has been one of the main benefactors of the relationship between California home prices and home prices locally.

“At the same time, for the people here selling their homes and the homebuilders, especially high-end homes, it’s been good for them and good for the economy. And some of them do bring their businesses here. So my point is this isn’t always mutually exclusive. We want California to succeed because we get the benefit of sharing a very long border with them, and there is that spillover.”

Woods said the key is to attract high-net worth individuals to the valley but also get them to bring their businesses along with them and enroll their kids in local schools.

“That way they are generating an economic impact instead of just a one-off purchase of real estate,” he said.

Wealth migration has become a hot topic as of late as local real estate agents in the valley have said they’ve seen a rise in high-net-worth individuals from both Washington and California recently, largely driven by new tax policy and politics in those states targeting millionaires and billionaires.

California is flirting with a billionaire’s tax that has already spurred a number of high-net-worth individuals to flee the state (on paper) including Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently bought a property in Florida, and Peter Thiel, who is one of the founders of PayPal and Palantir.

Brian Bonnenfant, the project manager for the Center for Regional Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, agrees that California’s diaspora has put upward pressure on local real estate, however said migration for the wealthy is a complicated thing and hard to properly quantify at points.

“We also have to look at how the wealthy play the tax game,” he said. “On paper it may seem like California is losing residents, but are they just losing taxpayers? California will remain as one of the most beautiful places in the U.S. and the wealthy will still want a piece of that for ‘180 days’ of residence a year.”

Gearing up for population decline

Multiple demographic experts are forecasting that natural growth (births compared to deaths) will peak in the U.S. around 2030, and Bonnenfant said how we approach population in the future will change at a structural level.

“When the U.S.’s natural growth turns negative, states will then earnestly begin competing with other states for in-migration to fill their schools, staff their health care, and prevent neighborhoods from ‘going Detroit.’”

Detroit, once a manufacturing powerhouse, has lost more than half of its population since the 1950s, and experienced a rapid decline in population after the automotive industry in America largely moved offshore due to globalization. The city has thus had to tear down hundreds of thousands of vacant homes over the past few decades and Bonnenfant said Nevada could see a similar fate as it has always relied heavily on immigration to keep its population from declining.

Nevada has the lowest amount of state-born residents (28.7 percent) in the entire country, and one of the higher rates of foreign-born populations at (21.3 percent), according to data provided to the Las Vegas Review-Journal from Bonnenfant. The next closest state is Florida at 34.7 percent, and the state with the highest foreign-born population is California at 29 percent.

Once overall population starts to peak in the U.S., Bonnenfant said it will become a competition for smaller states to attract wealthy individuals from high tax states such as California, New York and New Jersey. He said immigration will switch from keeping people out to trying to attract them in.

“Population loss and its impacts on economies and government services is moving into a paradigm shift, and states will be forced to play a version of ‘Hunger Games’ for new population from high-taxed states,” he said. “Nevada is in a good spot for the upcoming ‘population bomb’ due to its low tax structure, amenities and weather. Hopefully, our state government will begin to incorporate policies that addresses our national decline in natural growth and its implications on Nevada’s future. It’s going to be a big deal.”

Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.