Fewer New Yorkers moving out of state, U.S. Census Bureau says

Fewer people moved away from New York in 2023 than the year before, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Thursday, and some analysts suggested the data indicated a modest recovery after thousands of New Yorkers fled the state during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Year to year changes don't always mean much," Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said in an interview. "But clearly, it's better for New York that fewer people are leaving than had been and more are coming in. If you're searching for reasons, it may be a post-pandemic resettlement where folks that left the area and went across [state] lines to Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, are coming back."

The 2023 American Community Survey of what the Census Bureau calls "state-to-state migration flows" found that an estimated 481,544 New Yorkers moved out of the state, while 302,835 moved in that year, for a net population loss of 178,709. In contrast, the 2022 estimates had 545,598 people moving out of New York, while 301,461 people moved to the state, for a net population loss of 244,137, a statistically significant change from the net loss in 2023, according to Newsday's analysis of the survey data.

Positive signs, with caveats

Also, Newsday's analysis found that while the increase in the number of people moving to New York in 2023 — 1,374 — compared with 2022 was not statistically significant, the decrease in the number of people leaving — 64,054 fewer people left the state in 2023 than in 2022 — was statistically significant.

Levy said the new Census data is "a positive sign for New York. It doesn't mean we don't have a lot of work to do to make the state more affordable, more livable in terms of traffic and pollution and other issues that people have with the metro area. But clearly, at least in this latest accounting, things are going in the right direction."

But Matt Cohen, CEO of the Long Island Association, the region's largest business group, was less sanguine about the survey results.

"The 2023 data shows that New York’s domestic migration deficit with other states is staggering — it’s like losing an entire Town — and we are hemorrhaging residents because of our exorbitant cost of living, and we need to make our quality of life on Long Island accessible to future generations by creating jobs and expanding our housing stock and affordability," Cohen said in a statement. 

Cohen referenced a February 2024 LIA report that looked at migration patterns, finding: "The estimated number of people leaving Long Island and moving to other states increased by 12,603 from 2021 to 74,202 in 2022, the highest level in the six years since 2017. At the same time the number of movers to Long Island from other states declined by 5,297 from 21,138 in 2021 to 15,841 in 2022, the second lowest level since 2017."

Florida a favorite 

Leslie Reynolds, a research analyst with Cornell University's Program on Applied Demographics, which serves as New York State's representative in the Federal-State Cooperative for Population Estimates, said the 2023 estimates were "not a reversal [of population losses] but a slight recovery from the COVID time that hit New York especially hard."

"I saw that 64,054 less people moving out in 2023, as compared with 2022. And only 1,374 people moving into New York. So it was really driven by less people moving out." She added that the early pandemic years of 2021 and 2022 were "particularly high" for people moving out of New York.

"In those few post-COVID years, there was unprecedented losses compared to the previous decade," Reynolds said.

The top five states to receive the largest numbers of New Yorkers in 2023, were Florida, at 71,138 (which was down from 91,201 in 2022); New Jersey, 55,926; Pennsylvania, 42,637; California, 35,062; and Texas, 29,610. (North Carolina ranked just behind Texas at 29,175). The states sending the largest numbers of people to New York were New Jersey, 40,474; California, 31,097; Pennsylvania, 27,603; Florida, 24,749; and Massachusetts, 21,001.

"Florida has been the top destination state" for New Yorkers for years, Reynolds said, adding that it was also common for people to move from neighboring states. "We did some migration analysis in the past few years," she said, "those are the exact same states we found in slightly different order."