New York City has been the most populated city in the United States for centuries, and with about 8 million residents, it still is today.
However, over the past few years, hundreds of thousands of people have abandoned the Big Apple in search of a more affordable, safer, and calmer life elsewhere. Even though the mass exodus is technically slowing, research finds that the city is continuing to lose tens of thousands of residents a year.
COVID in NYC
During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans were forced to stay home, wear masks in public, and stay six feet away from any person they encountered.
Of course, these instructions were easier to follow for some than for others. In NYC, where most apartments are minuscule and people are packed into the streets and subways like sardines, the COVID lockdown felt especially debilitating.
The Mass Exodus Begins
Because many companies opted for a work-from-home model to keep their employees safe from infection, many New Yorkers realized if they could work from anywhere, they didn’t want to stay in the wildly expensive and crowded city.
Therefore, tens of thousands of NYC residents up and left in 2020, moving to the nearby suburbs or even to different states halfway across the country. Once the lockdown was lifted, NYC assumed its residents would return, but that’s not exactly what happened.
Leaving NYC Became Even More Popular
By 2022, COVID was all but over, but people were still leaving New York on a daily basis. Some blamed the ever-increasing cost of living, others the high price tags for rent, and some said they simply wanted a quieter life away from the chaos of the metropolis.
Research collected by the US Census Bureau shows that in 2022, 126,000 people left the city, and while only 78,000 technically left in 2023, the Bureau has calculated that a whopping 546,164 New Yorkers have fled the city since April 2020.
Over Half a Million People Left the Big Apple
By losing more than half a million people in just four years, the population of New York City would have decreased by about 5.3%.
However, the population percentage drop is not actually that high because, as hundreds of thousands of people are leaving, tens of thousands of people are still arriving every year.
New York’s Newest Arrivals
There are certainly some Americans still moving to New York City after graduation, for a job, or just because they’ve always dreamed of life in the big city, but there aren’t very many of them.
The vast majority of NYC’s newest arrivals are not young citizens looking for work but, instead, international migrants looking for a home.
Let’s Talk Numbers
According to the US Census Bureau, there are still far more people leaving the city than there are arriving. However, thanks to births, deaths, international migration, and domestic migration, the number of actual people in each borough hasn’t changed that drastically.
Brooklyn lost the most residents, with 28,306 external migrations, but Manhattan’s population has actually grown by 2,908 people since April 2020.
182,000 People Have Migrated to NYC
It’s quite challenging to pinpoint the exact number of international migrants who made their way to NYC over the past few years, as many don’t inform the local government of their presence.
However, the city’s Mayor, Eric Adams, has calculated that around 182,000 migrants have arrived since the spring of 2022. Adams also explains that some of those nearly 200,000 people have since left the city and, therefore, there are fewer non-citizen residents than the US Census Bureau is speculating.
The US Census Bureau’s Data Is Inaccurate
Along with Mayor Eric Adams, the New York City Department of Planning also believes that the most recent data released by the US Census Bureau is not entirely accurate.
Spokesperson Casey Berkovitz explained, “This July 2023 estimate does not fully account for changes in this population. The city’s population was essentially unchanged between July 2022 and 2023, and we will be working with the Census Bureau to adjust the estimate.”
NYC Is Desperately Trying to Care for These Tens of Thousands of Migrants
As tens of thousands of international migrants arrive in NYC, many of them have nowhere to live. So, the New York City Department of Planning has been hard at work, trying to get people off the streets and into safe housing.
According to the city, it has currently housed around 64,800 migrants and is spending an average of $387 per day on each household. In fact, government officials in NYC estimate that they will spend around $10 billion this year ensuring migrants are housed and cared for.
Adams Is Calling the Situation a Humanitarian Crisis
While the government is doing its best to handle the intense influx of migrants to the city, Mayor Eric Adams has declared a state of emergency.
He believes the current situation is unquestionably a humanitarian crisis and is asking for financial assistance from the federal government to ensure the safety of both his documented and undocumented residents.
What’s Next for New York City?
While New York spends billions of dollars to house its newest residents, the cost of housing is simultaneously skyrocketing. At this point, even though hundreds of thousands of people have left the city, there are still far less affordable options that its current residents need.
What will happen next in the Big Apple is anyone’s guess. However, if things keep going as they are now, it’s highly likely that the city will look much different in a few years than it did before the pandemic.
