All the essays you were forced to read about why New York City is the worst place ever to be are heretofore validated. Census numbers confirm that more people have fled NYC in recent years than any other US city.
In other words, more people have been considering leaving New York, then meditating on it for a bit ‘til it feels good in their hearts and then doing what feels right, perhaps returning only to realize it’s good that they left. Gothamist points to US Census records, which “show that over 1 million people have abandoned the New York area since 2010, opting to forgo our high tax rates and rampant political corruption in favor of Florida’s sinkholes and whatever’s in Texas.”
According to The New York Post’s Census breakdown, the rate of New York departures was 4.4 percent, “the highest negative net migration rate among the nation’s large population centers”:
The number of people leaving the region — which includes parts of New Jersey, Connecticut, the lower Hudson Valley and Long Island — in one year swelled from 187,034 in 2015 to 223,423 in 2016, while the number of international immigrants settling in the tristate area dwindled from 181,551 to 160,324 over the same period, records show.
Meanwhile, the rate of essays published about people leaving New York has seen an increase of 400 percent. Wow.
The city is still growing, though, just at a slower rate:
The population of the New York region still grew 2.7 percent from 2010 to 2016, thanks to foreign arrivals and births, records show.
New York City, the main driver of the region’s population, is on track to have 8.6 million people by 2020, from a current population of 8.5 million, according to July 2016 records.
So, some people left (good riddance) and new people came (welcome) and this will continue happening.
DISCUSSION
Why I’m Leaving New York essays are the most annoying pieces of writing to me. It’s a place. Live here or don’t. Literally nobody cares, and your personal decision about whether to live here or not does not make or break the city.
But also, I grew up here, and I imagine that reading think pieces about the live-in-worthiness of one’s hometown would be annoying to anyone.