New York lost more residents – and at the largest rate – in 2023 than any other state, despite an overall rise in the U.S. population, according to U.S. Census data.
The bureau released a map showing the percentage change in state populations between July 2022 and July 2023 – New York stands out as the only state colored a deep orange, a label for a percentage change of -0.5 or more.
Between 2020 and 2022, NYC has lost 5% of its population. That’s approximately 450,000 people (or about 2% of the state’s population) in two years, according to the comptroller report referenced in the article.
In addition to the very simple assumption that the majority of people leaving are from the majority population center (NYC and its metro area), the recent history of people leaving NYC, it is in fact perfectly reasonable to assume it is people from NYC or the NYC metro area leaving.
You know why it’s reasonable to assume? Because all the data we have is about aggregate numbers for the time period, and numbers for NYC for the two year timeframe prior. We don’t know why the people left. Which, by the way, is unreasonable to assume that it’s for political reasons when we have pretty good nationwide data showing us that the rise in remote work has led to an increase in people leaving densely populated areas to go life somewhere cheaper.
So, you see, using data that we have, we can make reasonable assumptions rather than jump to the notion that the moves are political in nature, which is what Fox News wants you to assume.
As an aside, according to the article, the gross number of people leaving the state was about 37k people higher this year than last. Inflow may have been different but I can’t find any readily available data for the year prior. But more people did leave the state this year than last, but that pales in comparison to the change between 2020 and 2022.