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On March 19, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-33-20 2020, which required all residents of the state of California to shelter in place for all but essential activities such as grocery shopping, retrieving prescriptions from a pharmacy, or caring for relatives. This shelter-in-place order (SIPO), the first such statewide order issued in the United States, was designed to reduce COVID-19 cases and mortality. While the White House Task Force on the Coronavirus has credited the State of California for taking early action to prevent a statewide COVID-19 outbreak, no study has examined the impact of California's SIPO. Using daily state-level coronavirus data and a synthetic control research design, we find that Californias statewide SIPO reduced COVID-19 cases by 152,443 to 230,113 and COVID-19 deaths by 1,940 to 4,951 during the first three weeks following its enactment. Conservative back of the envelope calculations suggest that there were approximately 2 to 4 job losses per coronavirus case averted and 108 to 275 jobs losses per life saved during this short-run post-treatment period.