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.
if you can work remotely then why live in a closet?
In order to live next to all the city stuff? Some people like cities after all, and more space is more space to clean
I am so country that the only time I ever visited a city I got vertigo and couldn’t look in any direction but down.
It wasn’t even a huge city. It was Charlotte NC.
When I was a kid I dreamed of going to a city and playing music and being a part of the culture.
The girls got to me though and I have instead repopulated a rural area. :p
I have 7 kids, 2 adopted, 5 biological.
My guitar is used almost exclusively to play Yellow Submarine and sing the family’s names in place of yellow. “We all live in little Abby’s submarine, in mommy’s submarine, in daddy’s submarine.”
My youngest thinks Beatlemania is still a thing. First thing every morning. “Daddy, I want my Beatles.” Sister comes in swinging demanding Pinkfong.
O…Kay?
Wow, your comment is more pointless than mine. Good job!
Damnit. Now you got “we all live in daddy’s submarine” stuck in my head
I’ve apparently really upset people with my comment somehow.
The literal endless abundance of things to do. Idc if my place is a closet if I’m never in it. Obviously if you’re raising a 5 person family it’s harder, but if you’re solo or DINK then why wouldn’t you
Solo converting to DINK here, and for me, after spending years in a city, basically while there’s tons to do in a city, there’s only a relatively small portion of it that I actually want to do.
Combine that with my love of outdoor hobbies which are all farther from me while living in a city…
And at this point, for me, it’s more about finding the smallest city that offers me most of what I like about cities while being small enough that I lose as much of the negatives as possible, with bonus points for a city that’s small enough for me to live on the edges, where I can have a house with a yard and a garage, while being within a 10 minute drive of city center, but also less than 30 minutes from outdoor recreation opportunities.
I’m also at the age where “stay home” is often my preferred choice of thing to do, so having a spacious, comfortable home where I can enjoy living is a major consideration. A 500 sqft 1BR that I share with a roommate or two ain’t cutting it.
Different people like different things, and while cities provide a lot, there’s also a lot they don’t.
pollution, noise, lack of nature, and depending on the city crime and corruption
There’s no corruption quite like deep country corruption. Oh, you’re dating the sheriff’s daughter? Well we’ll just look the other way…
even withstanding, the other issues are still present. I’m not saying cities are hellscapes, but they are lacking a few advantages that rural areas have. I like touching my own plot of dirt on this pale blue dot. My own piece of Earth. There is nothing like the nutrient overload from the first of the seasons garden fresh backyard tomato grown from last years compost. Or building random projects; or just lying on the ground looking at the stars anytime I want. In my book no amount of money would be worth sacrificing all that to live in a dense city for me personally. But this is just my outlook, I understand many other people value things differently.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I live in rural Iowa and i love being able to go so deep into the woods there isn’t another person for miles. Lots of land to bike on and plenty of cool places to camp and chill outdoors.
I’m just saying, corruption can happen anywhere.
New York is a huge state. Why would you need to live in a closet?
Nearly half the state population is in NYC alone. Expand that out to the nyc metropolitan area within New York, and you’re getting close to 3/4 of the state population.
It’s quite reasonable to assume that the vast majority of the folks that left New York were leaving NYC.
I think what they’re saying is that if people wanted to leave NYC, they could stay in State and have more room.
Then again there’s people who effectively live in NYC without even living in the state.
I’m sure some did, but there’s no reason to think a leaver of NYC is vastly more likely to move upstate. I’m sure most would move to another city, for one thing, because most people live in cities in general, and all the more if you once lived in NYC.
Yeah, but New York State is not going to be a viable option for a lot of people. Bigotry in small town New York is real to the point that sundown towns are a thing, and even when they’re not, it’s a lot easier to find a confederate flag bumper sticker than an antifa one, especially if you’re out of Hudson valley.
Oh, no there’s absolutely no reason to assume that. Making assumptions based on a Fox News graph is a really bad idea.
They did lose 0.5% but they’ve lost less this year than they did last year.
Let’s say people were leaving due to liberal policy change They would almost certainly just be from the rural areas. It could be changes in the city, zoning, rent, in which case it would be almost solely from the people in the city.
In any case we really need more data, You can’t just assume because more people live over there that the people are leaving equally
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.
Blue states going down, red states going up. The electoral college will fuck us all.
Outside of NYC, NY is a red state. But will 100,000 have that great an influence on the electoral college? It doesn’t sound like a lot in a population of 19 million.
There are pockets of NY, outside of NYC, that are blue. The big areas that are red are mostly rural counties. But land doesn’t vote, people do, so it doesn’t matter if 1,000 people in a huge area vote red when 100,000 people in a small city vote blue.
You’re right that NYC helps keep us blue, but they aren’t the only ones. In 2020, NY voted for Biden over Trump 60.8% to 37.7%. If we removed NYC’s counties, NY would have still voted for Biden, but at a much closer 52.4% to 45.9%.
The geographic majority of Washington state is red, but the state is consistently blue. Because land doesn’t vote.
Not alone. It would have to lose ~3% relative to other states to lose a vote. However, this is just one year and southern states are all gaining people at twice the rate New York is losing them, so theoretically a blue vote could be flipping to a red vote every few years just from the amount of people leaving blue states.
Note that when New York loses Congressional seats, the legislature will presumably gerrymander them such that the Republicans in New York are eliminated, so it shouldn’t affect Congress at all.
watches the flood of blue tech people swarming to NC
yeah, I’m not sure the vote will flip that way. It doesn’t take much to impact these tiny population red states.
It depends on who is moving. It doesn’t help Dems to run up the score in California and New York, so having people leave might actually help. If some of those educated progressive knowledge workers move to cities in the south, it could make a huge difference.
Nice take.
I saw the map and had the same dismal overall reaction but this is a very valid point!
Unless blue people moving to Texas and Florida flip those states blue, in which case red might be done for good.
Unless it causes red states to flip blue. GA and AZ are examples of that happening.
I hope so, but my experience in Tennessee is that only the conservatives are leaving California and moving here.
Yeah, Tennessee is beyond repair. But other states are close enough to flip.
If the people equivalent to the entire population of Wyoming moved out of New York, most people wouldn’t notice.
In fairness Wyoming could disappear and nobody would realize until the military and the truckers pointed it out, and even then there’d be a delay
How do we even know it is there right now? We should create something like is-wyoming-still-there.com to keep an eye on it.
Moving to states that have banned abortion, smart move dumbasses.
It’s people moving from places where they actually want to live (because of qol) to places where they can afford to live. Though it’d be interesting to see like a “true” cost of living for these places.
Believe it or not, people might not always have abortion at the top of their list when they’re moving. In fact I’m willing to bet cost of living is near the top of their list.
Spot on. Migration is a major factor in affecting political change anyway.
Some of these comments are so out of touch. The irony is that people who blanket support pro choice will go extinct as they abort more of their children over time or don’t reproduce at all (the people above you in this chain). Conservative people don’t abort (now by law) - their population will grow. Thus more anti-abortion laws will happen.
Nice, managed to sneak in the great replacement theory with your anti-choice rhetoric
That’s not great replacement theory. Maybe even the opposite?
Great Replacement Theory is usually spouted by white nationalist (who are conservatives) who think THEY are being replaced. What that commenter just said is those conservatives are the ones reproducing the most.
A big part of the great replacement theory is the assertion that democrats move migrants and “import” migrants to change the voting blocks.
According to previous studies on who gets abortions, a lot of people getting abortions are people who have already had children, so your latter point doesn’t really check out.
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Yeah I don’t get that at all. I had several female co-workers who accepted relocation packages to Texas when my company offered them right when Texas started passing anti-abortion laws.
I figured it was none of my business to ask why they did but man…they are either really smart and wanting to flip the state blue or they aren’t thinking it’s going to affect them.
No amount of money would make me want to move to Texas or Florida, or anywhere the Alt-right has a strong political hold
They don’t think it will happen to them.
Yknow despite literally all metrics of quality of life, health, and safety being even worse in red states than the already pathetic US average.
Why is it that every conservative leaning government worldwide is currently in a self destructive spiral while socialist societies are getting better and better in all measurable metrics?
Curious.
Reasonable investments in the future vs. winning points now
It’s pretty much the bane of any capitalist society
Like Venezuela? Bangladesh? Republic of the Congo? Seems like maybe too broad a statement to me. Some Socialist countries have seen improvements for some people - that doesn’t make is a magical indicator for societal well-being.
My guess is that they have the means (funds, paid time off) to travel out of state, if needed.
Having just moved from Texas to the north east, people in the northeast are clueless to how bad it actually is.
They’re moving to states that have the same views as them. Good for them.
How do you think political change happens in the first place? Not to mention how bad must life be in NY, a way more progressive state to want to move somewhere like Texas.
I’m curious how many people are just leaving the US entirely. Technically this probably wouldn’t represent it since expats are still counted as a resident of whatever state you lived in last untill you revoke your citizenship.
I was wondering what would happen to gentrified neighborhoods once they ratched up the cost of living so high that the gentrifiers couldn’t afford it.
Louis Rossmann would be proud.
The social services and community involvement are better in Indiana than they were (and appear to still be, though I no longer have direct experience there) in WNY. Health insurance was better in NY, though. If I go back to die there, it will only be for the sake of nostalgia and not any belief that the remainder of my life would be better.
Depends heavily where you are. If it’s not Indy, ft Wayne, Lafayette, Bloomington, or Terre Haute (maybe Evansville?), IN is pretty craptastic in both those regards. At least that has been my 35 years of experience.
Little towns got shitty roads and hospitals I wouldn’t enter unless I were actively dying. Not to mention the abhorrent under funding of police / fire / education that is rampant… But all my kids family lives here so I’m here too lol.
moving to places in the south because initially was cheaper and driving up prices such as property taxes for the ones already there
At least they’re presumably turning red places purple
Room rents too high I guess.
I moved from Maryland to Western New York in 2023. Apparently me and my family weren’t enough to move the needle.
Well duh they have to be quick. If they’re not gonna steal the houses someone else will.
Watch Rossman Repair’s ordeal trying to rent a shop in NYC ultimately leaving the state.
Huh. We’ve been considering moving to upstate NY from central CA, promarily due to ecological factors like climate, air quality, and what seems like the threat of eternal drought. I like central California well enough, but I’m dead sick of 117 degree Augusts and casually living with air quality that makes your eyes water.
Anyone got some insight on why NY lost so much population?
That population loss, driven by the pandemic, effectively wiped out nearly three-quarters of the population gains made during the prior decade.
Pandemic hit the city hard and people do not want to go back for overpriced closets.
