New York City has lost 5.3% of its population — nearly 475,000 people — since the start of COVID. And most of them are hunkering down in the South.

SBFNews · Jun 13, 2023

New York City has lost 5.3% of its population — nearly 475,000 people — since the start of COVID. And most of them are hunkering down in the South. Here's why

Vishesh Raisinghani
Mon, June 12, 2023 at 6:00 PM GMT+8
·4 min read

It’s no secret that America’s largest cities are losing residents. And while New York’s losses slowed in 2022, the nation’s largest metropolitan area has seen substantial declines since the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the world’s work and leisure habits.

So where is everyone headed? To the American South, it turns out.

The pandemic triggered migration out of New York City because, simply put, it shut off residents from the many dining, arts and entertainment attractions that made the city so vibrant in the first place. Take those away, and maybe the Big Apple isn’t much different from Appleton, Wisconsin.

Between April 2020 and July 2022, New York’s estimated population slumped from 8.80 million to 8.34 million, a drop of roughly 468,000 residents — nearly 5.3% of the city’s total population. Much of this loss was recorded between 2020 and 2021, which suggests that the city’s struggles with the health crisis and the shift to remote work may have played roles in the mass departure.

Remarkably, three New Jersey cities immediately surrounding New York — Bayonne, Union City, and Hoboken — joined the shrinking Big Apple on the list of top 10 population losers from 2020 to 2021.

Elsewhere, San Francisco lost 7.5% of its residents between 2020 and 2022, accounting for a greater loss of total population than New York. Los Angeles and Chicago also saw significant numbers of residents depart.

So where did all those residents land? According to the Census data, mostly in cities in the Southern States. Georgetown, Texas saw a huge spike in population: more than 14.4% in 2022 alone. Meanwhile, Florida's Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles recorded more than 126,000 New Yorkers moving to the state and exchanging their drivers license.

Some analysts worry these changes will impact America’s political map if large blue states like New York, California and Illinois continue to lose population to red states like Florida and Texas. Others worry about the erosion of the tax base.

However, the migration may not alter America’s demographic map as much as expected — or could even have the reverse effect of making red states more blue.

Meanwhile, New York remains the most populated city in the country by a wide margin. According to the latest Census numbers, more than 8.3 million people still call New York home. That’s more than double the size of the next largest city, Los Angeles, which is home to just 3.8 million people.

At its current pace of annual population loss, it’s possible New York could slip to second position within 21 years. However, it’s questionable at best whether any such drop could occur without another pandemic-like event.

The end of lockdowns and the return to office life has already lured enough residents back to push rent prices higher across the city. Median rent in the city is up 15% year-over-year and is currently sitting at an all-time high.

Meanwhile, Manhattan added more than 17,000 residents in the year ending July 2021.

Will the city resume its pre-pandemic growth trajectory? Big metros will always have the headaches of bad traffic, a high cost of living and overcrowding.

But it’s not as though you don’t have advantages, either. And when you count up the Big Apple’s sports scene, attractions, culture and vast public transit network, it’s no wonder the “I Love New York” slogan has been a keeper since 1977.