New York City’s Population Is Declining; Estimates Differ on How Much

An empty office in Rockefeller Center in New York City on March 4, 2021. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

New York City has lost hundreds of thousands of citizens in the past few years, according to census data. But public policy experts are divided about the causes of the population swings, how long term they are, and whether the U.S. Census Bureau is using reliable methodology.

According to the Census Bureau, the trend has increased since the global COVID-19 pandemic. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of April 2020, the Census Bureau’s estimates set New York City’s population at 8,804,199.

According to the bureau’s tally from July 1, 2020, the figure had fallen to 8,740,252. The trend continued in 2021 and 2022, when the population fell to 8,462,216 and 8,335,798, respectively.

By July 1, 2023, the city’s population had decreased to 8,258,035. As noted in a recent study by the Empire Center, a New York-based public policy institute, the net loss of nearly 550,000 people has effectively reversed the gain of 629,066 residents over the period from 2010 to 2020.

Experts say the state is at risk of losing more congressional districts and, hence, seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The state underwent redistricting and lost five districts after the 1980 census, three after the 1990 census, and two after the 2010 census, according to Jeffrey Wice, a professor at New York Law School and a senior fellow at the New York Elections, Census, and Redistricting Institute.

“I would hope we can minimize losses after 2030, and that’s going to be a major challenge, and that’s a reason why many people are already preparing for the 2030 census now,” Wice told The Epoch Times.

With crime and the immigration crisis often in local headlines, some experts point to a declining quality of life as driving longtime residents of the city to pack up and leave. Policies stemming from the still-recent COVID-19 pandemic are also mentioned.

Others say the Census Bureau relies on flawed methodology and does not begin to understand the variety and number of off-the-books living arrangements in the nation’s largest city.

Moving Pieces

In the view of Robert VerBruggen, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a public policy think tank, the COVID-19 pandemic, crime, and rising housing prices are only pieces of a complex puzzle.

“The pandemic drove people to less dense areas, but other factors contributed to the continuing decline. I would also add the rise of work-from-home. Many people no longer need to live in a big city and pay big city housing prices to have access to good jobs,” VerBruggen told The Epoch Times.

The Census Bureau faces a daunting task, given the large inflows and outflows of residents that happen at once. Yet, in VerBruggen’s view, the immigrant influx does not raise questions about the numbers, because the bureau has noted net changes in population.

“The data represent the net change in population, not the number of people who left. So they include in-migration, out-migration, deaths, and births,” VerBruggen said.

If the census data are at fault, they err on the low side, he argued. VerBruggen said he agreed with sources quoted in a recent New York Times story who suspect that immigrants in group quarters such as shelters did not receive full and accurate representation in the census.

“This would mean that the city actually lost less total population than the census says, though only because the outflow of migrants is making up for losses elsewhere,” he said.

New York City during a solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Shenghua Sung/NTD

Questioning the Data

Others are still more skeptical about the accuracy of the Census Bureau’s figures for New York City.

According to Wice, the news reports about a declining population rest on deeply flawed census methodologies that fail to present an accurate picture of demographic trends.

“COVID did result in a number of people leaving the city; you can’t deny that. The question is how many people are moving back, who is moving back, and where they are moving back to,” Wice said.

He said that more fundamentally, there is a distinct lack of consensus as to the accuracy of the Census Bureau’s recent attempts to monitor population trends in the nation’s largest city.

The Department of City Planning has been at odds with the Census Bureau over its predictions, Wice said. For one thing, the gain of 629,066 residents that the bureau recorded for the decade from 2010 flies in the face of the bureau’s own predictions for the city and state.

“Keep in mind that in the late 2010s, before the 2020 census was taken, the Census Bureau was estimating a significant loss of population in the state, of possibly two congressional districts,“ he said. ”Yet the 2020 centennial census showed over a 4 percent increase in the state’s population, and New York City alone picked up well over 600,000 people.”

Since the 2020 census, the bureau has attempted to calculate accurate head counts for New York City residents without knowing the full number of recent arrivals who live in shelters, even ones that the city owns, Wice said.

A sign during a promotional event for the U.S. Census in Times Square in New York City on Sept. 23, 2020. Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Getting Granular

Part of the problem is simply that the city’s address list does not come close to corresponding precisely with the number of residents. Despite the efforts of census workers, there are far too many impromptu and unofficial living arrangements to try to gauge population head counts by the number of street addresses in the city, Wice said.

“People deployed by the city looked in alleys, behind buildings, in garages, basements, doors that didn’t have mailboxes attached to them, just to see whether a unit was living there,” he said.

Wice said these efforts may have helped revise head counts to be more in line with actual occupancy, but the reality of housing arrangements in the city still does not align with census takers’ methodology.

“What you’ll often find are people in garages, attics, cellars, and back rooms,“ he said. ”You’ll find a house that may look like a one-family home from the outside but has five families, yet the Census Bureau does not send out questionnaires by name but by housing units.”

The Census Bureau’s Local Update of Census Addresses Operation still has much work to do before it can hope to produce more correct totals, Wice said.

A letter from the U.S. Census Bureau in a file photo. Michelle R. Smith/AP

Trusting the Researchers

Part of the issue here, Wice said, is that not everyone wants to come forward and provide accurate data to census takers, fearing that any interaction with them may call attention to unconventional, off-the-books arrangements and bring legal consequences. Hence, people hide or are unresponsive when census takers make the rounds.

“The census takers do not prosecute people for having illegal dwelling units; they simply want to count people accurately,“ he said. ”That’s their job. They’re not there as law enforcement agents, and people have to be convinced of that.”

The challenge of matching addresses with head counts is vast and daunting. In the end, it may be the Department of Planning that applies the most sophisticated methodology, according to Wice.

“I think that New York City’s population planners have the best handle on what the city’s population really is,“ he said. ”The Census Bureau’s estimates are not highly reliable compared to the numbers that the city itself can produce.”

The Census Bureau did not respond by publication time to a request for comment.