Any questions about why thousands of Texans leave for California every year?

Newcomers to California . . . tend to be more educated and make more money. “Those who move to California also tend to have higher education levels than those who move out — an especially important factor given the state’s strong need for college graduates,” Hans Johnson of the Public Policy Institute of California wrote. A glance at software engineering salaries says it all. A freshly minted college graduate in computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin might make, on average, $500,000 working in Los Gatos, west of San Jose. Austin, meanwhile, doesn’t even make a list from this year of the 25 top-paying markets for software developers (markets in which average salaries start at just over $200,000).

Data provided by Allied Van Lines hint at those economic incentives for the wealthy, showing residents of upscale Texas ZIP codes in Katy, The Woodlands, Austin and Dallas moving to even more upscale California ZIP codes including those in Los Angeles, Newport Beach, San Jose and San Francisco.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-10-17/california-texas-migration-why-people-move#

For those concerned about the net migration of 0.2% of Californians, the bottom line is housing costs:

Between 35,000 and 40,000 Texans move to California every year no matter what. It was a little lower during the Great Recession of 2007-2010, but it didn’t change during the drop in oil prices that began in late 2014. In other words, the Texan migration to California is steady and doesn’t seem to be driven by larger economic forces. Whether that’s Texans going to the University of California or surfers or aspiring actors, we don’t know. But the flow is steady and predictable.

The movement in the other direction — California to Texas — looks pretty different. It ebbs and flows. Even during the last recession, it wasn’t consistent, fluctuating up and down pretty considerably. And in the past two years, it has shot up to a level not seen since 2006. In 2018 and 2019, a little over 80,000 Californians moved to Texas. (Again, for perspective, that’s about two-tenths of 1% of California’s population.)

But why is this really happening? Admittedly, California has had a rough couple of years, but the fluctuation is considerable, and it doesn’t seem to be related to the price of oil (i.e., economic opportunity in Texas). If oil prices were a factor, we would have seen a big dip in 2014-2016. (Instead, during that time, California migration to Texas went up.)

As it turns out, the answer is simple. The driving force is not a pull into Texas but a push out of California: home prices.

https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/it-seems-all-california-moving-texas-true