Politics Report: San Diego Is Dying 

San Diego’s growth rate has long followed one path. 

The region was growing, largely thanks to more births than deaths among San Diego residents every year and migration. The assumption that this would continue has driven policy discussions for 20 years. 

Now, the region is not growing. For three consecutive years, the population has shrunk. 

The region’s natural population growth — the difference between how many people are born here each year and how many people die here — is still positive. More babies are coming into the world here than people dying. The region has been losing population the last three years because more people have been moving away from San Diego than have been moving here.  

But now that last pillar of growth – natural population, births versus deaths – could be changing. And that could have enormous consequences on political discussions about everything from transportation and housing to education and workforce development.  

The new data: The gap between the higher number of people being born here versus those people who are dying here has been closing since 2014. That year, nearly 25,000 more babies were born in San Diego than the number of people died. That gap shrank all the way to 15,000 last year, the lowest number since 2010.  

The latest forecast from the California Department of Finance anticipates that trend continuing in the coming decades, with natural population growth here reaching negative territory for the first time in 2036. 

What is happening: Recessions slow population growth. But Ray Major, SANDAG’s chief economist and deputy CEO said families haven’t fully returned to the behavior that forecasters expected out of them since the Great Recession more than 12 years ago. 

“People have put off having children, and they’re having fewer children, so we have smaller families,” he said. “Historically, we always expected we’d have more births than deaths going forward, but we now know that even after the recession, people are still not having kids or having fewer kids. So we have an aging population, and demographic forecasters weren’t ready for that in 2008.” 

That all amounts to a new question facing SANDAG as it prepares for its next long-term regional plan. San Diego is becoming an aging region with negative growth. The transportation and housing needs are different for that population, than for one that fancies itself, for example, a growing hub for life sciences companies and the young people poised to work for them. Major said SANDAG is beginning to ponder how that should change the agency’s approach. 

The takeaway: San Diego needs to grapple with its conception of itself. On its current trajectory, it is not a vibrant city that attracts young talent and fosters economic activity. It is instead a place that is so expensive and difficult to live that it repels people and discourages having children. That is not the story that leaders tell, but it is the truth of the forecasts that those leaders use to make decisions. 

City Walks Away from Employee Vaccine Mandate  

This week San Diego County announced that it would stop requiring new hires be vaccinated to protect them from COVID-19, unless they will work in health care. They also will stop requiring weekly COVID-19 tests for existing employees who chose not to get vaccinated. 

At the city of San Diego, Mayor Todd Gloria announced he too would stop requiring employees to get the vaccine and accommodate employees who had requested religious or medical exemptions. He painted his months-long push to force employees to comply as a success.  

“Before we instituted the vaccine mandate, just 69% of City employees were vaccinated, and I’m incredibly proud the vaccination rate is now over 90%,” Gloria said in a written press release.  

Almost 800 employees, the city announced, would be granted exemptions for religious and other reasons. We have heard a few employees were denied exemption requests but it’s unclear what exact threshold for the “sincerely held” religious beliefs the city is using. It’s obvious what’s happening here, hundreds of people have claimed a religious exemption by just saying they need a religious exemption.   

Examine the spin: This is quite a take for the mayor, if you think about it. Since July 2021, the mayor and his staff have insisted that all employees be vaccinated. Never once did they publicly indicate any percentage of employees would be allowed to avoid the shots.  

“This would become a new minimum requirement of employment and would be included in all future job bulletins,” managers announced to city labor union leaders in July. 

As deadlines passed, the city sent out notices of termination and the mayor held steadfast. We don’t have an exact count yet, but it looks like the city fired more than a dozen employees.  

Now, though, it appears Gloria has acknowledged he never intended to actually fire the bulk of employees who refused the vaccine. He just wanted them to think he would. Or if he had intended to fully enforce it, what changed this week? 

An employee who did not want to get vaccinated may have suspected the city would never actually go through with it, but that’s quite a bluff to call.  

A big promise: The mayor also announced this: “City departments will accommodate these employees by providing free weekly COVID-19 testing at the workplace to ensure the protection of employees and members of the public.” 

For hundreds of employees spread over the city’s many departments and workplace locations, that seems like another big promise/mandate. Can it pull it off?  

Notes 

A W for Stone: San Diego’s Stone Brewing won a massive judgement against MillerCoors for the latter’s alleged trademark violation when it for promoting its brand Keystone Light as “Stone.” The actual Stone Brewing company posted a Tweet with one letter reacting to the news. 

Unemployment now almost as low as two years ago: In February, San Diego’s unemployment rate hit 4 percent, just a bit higher than 3.8 percent we had in February 2020, before the pandemic began. The Workforce Partnership reported that we were still 14,000 workers shy from the 1.6 million employed people we had in the region in 2020. 

San Diegan in Ukraine: Steven Moore, a political affairs consultant who worked for many years in San Diego flew to Ukraine recently to raise money to help shepherd displaced people to safety.   

Related: Sergey Kagermazov, a Russian journalist who worked in our newsroom a few years ago, has decided to leave Russia for good. He sent us a note this week: “For me, the last straw was the law that any information about the war, other than official, can be punished by a fine or even prison. In fact, this is a ban on journalism.” He is staying in Turkey and says he has enough savings for a while.