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New York City is becoming the shriveled Apple.
Three of Gotham’s five boroughs saw some of the largest population declines in America last fiscal year, with only Manhattan bucking the post-COVID trend, according to US Census data released Thursday.
The population of Queens County plummeted by 50,112 residents in the 12 months ending July 1, 2022 — the third largest raw drop of any county in the US, behind only Los Angeles County (90,704) and Chicago’s Cook County (68,314).
Right behind Queens on the list of declines was Kings County (Brooklyn), which lost 46,970 residents over the same period, and Bronx County, where the population dropped by 41,143 residents.
Richmond County — also known as Staten Island — saw its population drop by just 2,351 residents over the same one-year period.
By contrast, Manhattan — which lost nearly 100,000 residents in 2021 — was the only borough that reversed its decline, with the population increasing by 17,472 residents in fiscal year 2022.
The increase is largely down to foreign and domestic migration.
Exactly 2,908 more Manhattan residents came to the island from elsewhere in the US, along with a net increase of 10,947 residents from overseas, plus 3,292 more births than deaths.
By comparison, the four outer boroughs — particularly Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx — saw far more residents moving out than foreigners moving in.
For example:
- A total of 76,719 Queens residents left the county, while only 17,266 international migrants arrived.
- In Brooklyn, 77,746 residents moved out, replaced by only 13,948 foreigners.
- In The Bronx, 60,368 residents left, replaced by only 11,085 international arrivals.
- In Staten Island, a relatively paltry 4,115 residents moved out while just 1,064 foreigners moved in.
New York City’s overall population dropped by 123,104 residents over those 12 months to 8,335,897 as of July 1, 2022 — down 468,297 people from its pre-pandemic peak.
A spokesperson for the Census Bureau said Thursday it counts residents regardless of immigration status — meaning the tally includes at least some undocumented migrants and asylum seekers who have flooded the city in recent months.
But Mayor Eric Adams’s office claimed the migration surge largely is not captured in the latest headcount, with a City Hall source noting a significant influx of asylum seekers to the city did not begin until the spring of 2022.
“New York City was hit hard by the pandemic, but New Yorkers are resilient, and our recovery is strong,” a spokesperson for the mayor’s office told The Post. “We’ve regained 99% of the jobs lost during the pandemic, Manhattan is growing, and population trends are returning to pre-pandemic norms. We are optimistic that 2023 will continue to bring great news for the future of New York City.”
Population experts said Manhattan’s reputation as a business and entertainment mecca for young and highly educated people may partially account for the turnaround as well.
“It is the center of the action in culture, nightlife, neighborhood amenities, museums, and all the rest and people want to be near that,” said John Mollenkopf, the director of the CUNY Graduate Center for Urban Research.
“Manhattan is full of professionals who can work from home, at least much of the week.”
In general, Mollenkopf said, the city needs to assimilate the migrants and do a better job of keeping aging residents and retirees from moving elsewhere.
“Bottom line, NYC needs to attract and integrate more international migrants,” he said.
“Mayor Adams is right on the importance of making it possible for the new arrivals to work. We have lots of unfilled labor needs and these people want to work.
“And we need to slow domestic outflow by making the city more elder-friendly (as we are also doing to make it more child-friendly through pre-K for all, etc.).”
A top business advocate blamed New York’s high taxes and cost of living — as well as immigration restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic — for the population loss.
“Population loss in the city is driven by three factors: federal immigration policies and COVID-19 restrictions that reduced foreign immigration, historically the source of population growth in the city; the shortage of affordable housing; and high taxes that drive high earners to relocate to states where they can keep at least 50% of their earnings, which is not the case in New York City since the federal government capped the deduction of state and local taxes from federal income tax liabilities,” said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the NYC Partnership.
“Manhattan housing prices have always been high, but the increase in rents in Queens and Brooklyn during the past five years is the biggest factor driving people out of those boroughs.”
Queens Chamber of Commerce president Tom Grech said the undercounting of undocumented immigrants may be a factor in the population drop, but he also blamed COVID lockdowns that shut down businesses.
“A lot of folks in the restaurant and hotel industries who were unemployed unfortunately left,” Grech said.
Manhattan’s turnaround was a notable bright spot compared to the troubling exodus from the outer boroughs, the experts said.
“New York City’s other four boroughs experienced a combined net domestic migration loss of 218,939 residents, which was a slight increase over the outflow of 214,792 residents during the previous year,” EJ McMahon, a senior fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy, wrote in a blog post.
During the first year of COVID, many Manhattanites appeared to relocate to surrounding suburban counties or upstate, McMahon pointed out.
But last year, many suburban and upstate counties — including Westchester, Suffolk and Nassau — also saw population dips, he said.
When asked for comment, Gov. Hochul’s office referred The Post to statements she made in January about the need to lower housing costs and improve public safety.
“If New Yorkers don’t feel safe in our communities, if they can’t afford to buy a home or pay the rent, then the dream stays out of reach,” Hochul said at the time.
“We’re already seeing signs of out-migration that we cannot ignore, something that I know all too well from growing up in Western New York at a time when jobs were so hard to find. We cannot allow that to happen again.”
The governor is currently pushing a plan to build more affordable housing as well as tighten the state’s 2019 bail reform law as she tries to hammer out a budget next month.
In contrast to NYC, six of the 10 counties with the largest population growth were in Texas, while three more were in Florida.
Maricopa County in Arizona, which includes Phoenix, gained the most population of any in the nation, adding 56,831 residents as of fiscal year 2022, up 1.3% from 2021.
“The migration and growth patterns for counties edged closer to pre-pandemic levels this year,” said Dr. Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for estimates and projections in the Census Bureau’s population division.
But not in New York.
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