Table of Contents
The Background: The city planners disagree.
City officials said that they were likely to challenge the 2023 census estimates, which they said had significantly underestimated the number of migrants and other people living in group settings, such as shelters and dorms.
A spokesman for the Department of City Planning, Casey Berkovitz, said that 180,000 migrants had come to the city since the spring of 2022 and that 64,600 were still in the city’s care. He added that the planning department would be “working with the Census Bureau to adjust the estimate.”
The city’s demographic experts believe that the population has stabilized after the early-pandemic declines, and that there are signs that the city’s long-term growth will resume in coming years.
The city had reached a record 8.8 million residents in early 2020. City officials had previously projected that New York City would reach 9 million within two decades.
The Numbers: Only Manhattan turned the corner.
Though the latest census numbers are a marked improvement over recent years, the turnaround has mostly benefited New York City’s more affluent areas, said Andrew Beveridge, the president of Social Explorer, a demographic data firm that analyzed the numbers.
“It’s very true that lots of well-off people left high-income areas temporarily, and many of them have come back,” Mr. Beveridge said. “But it’s the struggling people that leave for good.”
Four of the five boroughs continued to see population declines in 2023, according to the latest census estimates.
The Bronx, the city’s poorest borough, shrank the most, by nearly 1.9 percent, losing more than 25,000 residents, according to the analysis by Social Explorer. Brooklyn lost more than 28,000 residents and Queens more than 26,000, or just over 1 percent of their populations.
For the second straight year, Manhattan, the richest borough, was the only one to grow, however slightly. It gained nearly 3,000 residents in 2023 after adding more than 16,000 residents the year before. Still, Manhattan’s population, just under 1.6 million residents, was almost 97,000 less than it was in 2020.
The city’s decrease represented about three-quarters of New York State’s overall population decline of nearly 102,000 in 2023. Upstate New York lost more than 15,000 residents. From 2021 to 2023, the state has led the nation in population loss, according to Social Explorer.
Some commuter areas around New York City also lost residents. On Long Island, Nassau and Suffolk Counties shrank by more than 8,000 people collectively, though other areas, including the Connecticut and New Jersey suburbs, gained residents.
Why It Matters: It’s a lopsided recovery.
Many questions remain about the city’s long-term growth, including worries about a widening income gap and fears of declining revenue.
“We’re still in a decline phase, even if it’s better than it has been,” said Andrew Rein, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a policy think tank that is concerned with the effect of a shrinking population on the city’s tax base.
While the latest census estimates do not include demographic details about the people leaving, research suggests that it is lower- and middle-income residents, not millionaires, who are more likely to leave, largely because of affordability and housing issues.
The Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonprofit policy group, found that the people leaving the city at the fastest rate in 2022 were families making between $32,000 and $65,000, and a disproportionately large share of movers were Black or Hispanic.
Policymakers are closely monitoring population trends to determine where funding should be allocated, and whether higher income taxes for the rich should pay for it. Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she opposes such an increase.
