Exodus: ZP Better Together, Salesforce, and Dee Dee Myers
Every week, we recognize some businesses or people that are leaving or have left the Golden State and some of the biggest stories regarding the exoduses.
To access The California Book of Exoduses: CLICK HERE
ZP Better Together
ZP Better Together is a communications company focusing on providing services for those who are deaf or are hard of hearing. On January 28, 2021, they announced they were relocating their corporate headquarters to Austin, Texas. They were previously located in Rocklin, California in Placer County. Sherri Turpin, CEO of ZP, praised Austin in their announcement as “one of our nation’s most deaf-friendly cities and a growing technology and business hub.”
Salesforce Goes Permanently Remote
Following the path of other Silicon Valley companies, like Facebook and Twitter, Salesforce announced its “Work from Anywhere” plan. Salesforce is a Fortune 500 customer relationship management platform headquartered in San Francisco and whose market value is over $200 billion. They expect after the pandemic most of their workers to be in one of Salesforce’s offices 1-3 days per week, but they have allowed people to work fully remote or be entirely office-based. They also plan to accommodate their San Francisco headquarters to fit this new reality.
Senior Advisor to Newsom, Dee Dee Myers, Looks Past Headlines, Ignores the Big Numbers In Interview
Recently, CalMatters interviewed senior advisor to Governor Newsom and director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, Dee Dee Myers. She was asked about the ongoing California exodus of businesses. She says the situation is “overblown,” that the tax burden for the average Californian is relatively low, and claims that taxes won’t be rising any time soon. She also said that “there still somehow manages to be almost 40 million people who are still here.”
But her interview does not mention some critical facts about the exodus issue. First, California’s population was projected to have gone down last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimates. Second, according to a California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) analysis and the United States Census Bureau, there has been net domestic out-migration in California for not just the past few years, but it has consistently been a problem for decades.
Also, Myers frames her answer as if only the rich are leaving and the lower and middle classes are staying. But the opposite is actually true. According to the same LAO analysis, between 2007 and 2016, there has been net out-migration in California for those who make under $110,000 a year, but net in-migration to California for those who make more than $110,000 a year.
Looking at The California Book of Exoduses, the news stories, and the analyses, it is impossible to say that this whole thing is “overblown.”
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Brandon Ristoff is a policy analyst for the California Policy Center.