{"id":30534,"date":"2025-10-30T18:15:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T18:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/30534\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T18:15:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T18:15:24","slug":"could-fresno-county-start-losing-population-experts-predict-it-could-happen-sooner-than-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/30534\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Fresno County start losing population? Experts predict it could happen sooner than expected"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by Fresnoland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For generations, Fresno County boosters have touted steady population gains, envisioning annual growth rates of 1% to 2% stretching decades into the future.<\/p>\n

Now, these policymakers face a reality once unthinkable for their spreadsheets: negative growth.<\/p>\n

The county\u2019s population is expected to peak and then start falling \u2013 a decade sooner than what the state forecasted just a year ago.<\/p>\n

New projections from the California Department of Finance released in late September show<\/a> Fresno County\u2019s population will top out at about 1.08 million by 2045 before declining to roughly 1.01 million by 2070. That\u2019s a huge downward revision of state forecasts from 2018<\/a>, which estimated 1.5 million people living in the county by 2050.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The same picture holds for Madera County. Officials once estimated<\/a> over 300,000 people living there by 2040. The county will barely crack half that goal, with its population peaking at 172,000 in 2050, according to the state<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The shift could force local officials to reconsider assumptions about growth and economic development that have shaped urban planning across the San Joaquin Valley for decades.<\/p>\n

Walter Schwarm, chief demographer at the Department of Finance, said the revisions reflect a fuller accounting of 2020 census data and changing migration patterns. He cited slowing global movement and federal immigration policies as key factors.<\/p>\n

\u201cMigration is where we get the most revisions,\u201d Schwarm said.<\/p>\n

He pointed to extended travel restrictions, slower visa processing and a steep decline in asylum seekers. \u201cThe pace of accepting legal migrants is slower,\u201d he said. \u201cAll in all, it reflects the fact that we\u2019re going to have much lower net international migration over the next couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The forecast puts Fresno in a more precarious position than some neighboring counties. Projections for San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties were nudged slightly upward, buoyed by their proximity to Bay Area job centers.<\/p>\n

Fresno has historically drawn newcomers through Fresno State and the region\u2019s agricultural economy. But Schwarm suggested that a prolonged drop in immigration could accelerate automation on farms, reducing demand for the labor force that has long fueled the county\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith a sustained period of lower immigration, some of those agricultural jobs that attracted individuals might well be automated,\u201d he said. \u201cThe demand for agricultural labor would be a little bit less in some Central Valley counties.\u201d<\/p>\n

The forecast also poses questions for Fresno\u2019s own development plans. The city originally banked on a 2.9% growth rate, and most recently a 1.2% annual population growth, to justify the Southeast Development Area, or SEDA<\/a>, the Dyer administration\u2019s sprawling 45,000-home mega project in southeast Fresno.<\/p>\n

Schwarm expressed skepticism about sustaining growth above 1% anywhere in California.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know whether the level of housing that would really drive that level of growth could be actually sustained over any length of time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by Fresnoland. For generations, Fresno County boosters have touted steady population gains, envisioning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,622,114,113,14,15637,16780,1964],"class_list":["post-30534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-county","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-immigration","tag-madera-county","tag-migration","tag-population-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}