Demographers said the population slowdown was largely attributable to two of the main impacts of the recession -- high unemployment and the skyrocketing number of home foreclosures. Hans Johnson, associate director of the Public Policy Institute of California, noted that the state's jobless rate of 12.5 percent was higher than the national rate of 10.2 percent and that the gap was even more noticeable when California unemployment is compared with the rates in Texas and Washington, two traditional sources of migrants to California. Dennis Myers, a state finance department economist, said the collapse of the housing market was also a major factor in the slowdown. San Bernardino County, saddled with one of the highest home foreclosure rates in the U.S., lost 11,519 residents in the last year. The county had been among the fastest growing in the nation earlier in the decade, gaining 30,000 or more annually. Riverside County, also plagued with a foreclosure crisis, posted the slowest growth rate this decade. Myers and Johnson said the state historically has grown faster than the nation because of immigration, but those flows have also slowed. California attracted a net increase of 179,493 immigrants in the last year, the second lowest number this decade. 'There's a sense that California has limited opportunities and a high cost of living,' Johnson said The slow growth mimics the pattern seen in the last major recession, in the mid-1990s. Experts said the impact on the state could be mixed. Dowell Myers, a University of Southern California demographer, said the slowdown in growth was a welcome respite that state policymakers should use to plan for the future. He and others, for instance, said that policymakers must step forward to provide new public investments in the state's crumbling infrastructure. A new study by TRIP, a transportation research group, ranked Los Angeles roads as the roughest in the nation, with 92 percent of major roads in the metro areas in poor or mediocre condition. Deficiencies in roads and other transit systems cost state motorists $40 billion annually because of higher vehicle operating costs, traffic crashes and congestion, the study found. 'This is a wake-up call,' Myers said. 'We have a brief breathing spell, but we should not be lulled into complacency because growth will resume and we have to get ready for it.' But others point out that with the population continuing to grow -- albeit slowly -- the state will be under more pressure for services at a time of declining revenues. 'This is bad news for governments, because it means there are more people to take care of who will need health services, police and fire services, educational services,' said Jack Kyser, economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. 'Given the very, very difficult financial situation of most governments ... this is going to put more pressure on their budgets to stretch diminished resources.' Kyser added, however, that businesses would benefit from the continued population growth. Only 11 of 58 counties actually lost population, mostly those in the northeastern part of the state. Across the state, natural increases rather than migration accounted for the largest source of population growth. Overall, California's population grew to 38,487,889, the state estimated. That amounted to a 0.93 percent growth rate, the lowest since the last major recession in the mid-1990s. The state's population estimates were based on birth and death counts, along with data on driver's licenses, housing, school enrollment and federal income taxes. Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, and Santa Clara counties posted the highest population gains and account for over half of the state's growth. 