New York sees largest population decline of 50 states in 2023: census

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 214 points – New York sees largest population decline of 50 states in 2023: census
fox5ny.com

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.

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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.

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.

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.

Unless blue people moving to Texas and Florida flip those states blue, in which case red might be done for good.

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 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.

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement

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.

People who are pro choice might still choose to have children.

People don't necessarily inherit the political opinions of their parents, and can change their outlook over time.

People can spread their ideas through other methods than reproduction, such as debate, educating other people's children, or sharing their opinion on Lemmy.

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.

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.

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 moved from Maryland to Western New York in 2023. Apparently me and my family weren't enough to move the needle.

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.

moving to places in the south because initially was cheaper and driving up prices such as property taxes for the ones already there

Watch Rossman Repair’s ordeal trying to rent a shop in NYC ultimately leaving the state.

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.

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?

People are moving to states that build

Because companies don't want to build in places with strong labor protections.

Texas built more clean energy last year than California and it's not even close

Yes, because when I think of a state with robust energy infrastructure, I think of Texas...

Look, their statement is either true or false. You responded with something that the other person didn’t say anything about and because Texas is red, they got downvoted and you got upvoted.

I think you probably looked it up, realized they were right, so you decided to respond in that way instead of actually addressing what they said.

First, how dare you accuse me of looking up someone else's claim before engaging in debate on the internet. I would never...

But seriously, they originally said people are moving to places where companies are building. Someone else responded with something along the lines of "companies are building in red-leaning areas due to poor labor protections". Without addressing that point, the original guy said Texas is building more green energy than California. With that comment he: side stepped the claim that companies are building where there are fewer labor protections, and talked about a hyper specific example of one section of one industry where one state is creating more output (not more jobs, mind you) than another state. I responded with a claim that state-led conservative governments have not been a shining example of "how to govern in the best interests of your population".

So now, like an idiot, I'm gonna start googling things so that I can address his point and yours. First him:

Texas generates more green energy than California. He is correct. According to Wikipedia, but according to that same data California produces a higher percentage of green energy than Texas. Neither are in the top position for green energy production, or percentage. Even if they were, green energy production is not a direct correlation to economic prosperity, corporate development, or well employed populations. Better examples might have been standard of living, median income, or new jobs created. Texas beats California in only one category (new jobs created), but neither are in the top spot in any of the three. Are there better metrics? Undoubtedly- like median income divided by cost of living, or job growth of only jobs earning 1.25x annual cost of living by state, but I'm not gonna sit down and do that math, and I wouldn't want to make an unsubstantiated claim that doesn't fully paint the picture.

Now, to you:

Their statement is true, but as I've just demonstrated, trivially so. I responded with a dismissive remark because they, as well as many others, knew their claim didn't support their original thesis. We can sit and argue about why they were down voted and I was up voted, but you're probably correct. Left leaning sites like Lemmy probably didn't get more critical than "Texas bad, California good" with their voting. Or, maybe, they got down voted for attempting to lie with statistics by proving a point no one was arguing, and did an obviously bad job, which the users on this site critically analyzed and down voted accordingly. We'll never know.

You, however, came in and disregarded my point, and attempted to discredit my argument without disproving it, based on an appeal to the audience that I'm a partisan hack without the spine to engage in the debate at hand. Ironically, in doing so, you created a comment no better than mine, based on your own position, and a lot less pithy and amusing.

So now the ball is in your court. Are you gonna do hours and hours and jobs research, determine if it's blue or red states that create more economic prosperity for their occupants, and post your findings, or are you gonna look it up, realize I'm right, and decide to respond in a way that doesn't actually address what I said?

Do keep in mind the conversation is blue vs red states, not California vs Texas, and it's overall prosperity, not one or two cherry picked metrics. That was the mistake the original guy made, and if you do the same, I'm probably gonna respond with a single sentence joke dismissing the work you put in as an attempt to mislead.

"This is really worrying. Maybe we should start considering how to improve the economic condition of the middle cla..."

"!!! LET'S MAKE ABORTION ILLEGAL!!!!"

"... but that wouldn't help t..."

"🎉🎉🎉🎆🎇🎆🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲!!!!!MMMMMERICAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🎇🎆🎇🇺🇲🎆🎊🎊🎊🎊"

Sounds about right. Crushing taxes and stiffling of liberties will do that.

I'm Canadian so I'm really asking this genuinely, but which liberties are being crushed in NY that aren't in other states?

Back then in NY, I could get a hotdog, peanuts, and a kabob from three different food carts.

But now, some of these food carts are now clustered together instead of being a block or two apart!

Worse, some of these carts are offering Sriracha instead of Tabasco!

It's easily the fall of mankind here in NY.

I don't know OP, but I won't be surprised at all if it's something about guns.

I just moved to upstate from the Bible belt, like half the people I've talked to about guns have complained that you aren't allowed to shoot an intruder until they directly assault your person, not just them being on your property or inside the house taking stuff. Legit upset they can't value their possessions more than another human life.

The person I'm talking to said they don't care how bad the crime is, just how much police do about it. So yeah, they don't care about crime or safety, they just care about violence.

Guns, crime, and lower taxes. California, Oregon, Illinois, and NY are gun unfriendly, have barely enforced crime, and higher taxes. Texas and Florida are both gun friendly, actually enforce laws, and have lower taxes.

Californians leaving California because of the state of California and voting to make their new state more like California is peak Californian cognitive dissonance.

Please provide evidence that all of Florida and Texas have lower crime than all of Illinois, California, Oregon and New York.

And yeah, I'm not surprised guns was your main criterion, even before crime and taxes. Gotta have the precious.

Not crime rate, enforcement.

Guns were the reason you gave, so that came first.

So it doesn't matter how much crime there is, it only matters how many people arrested there are? That's your metric?

Enforcement metrics just show the rate that minorities get harassed by cops and aren’t proportional to crime itself. Crime statistics, unless comparing the same crime per-capita (ie, homicides per 100,000) tend to reflect the amount of regular activities criminalized rather than the number of harmful acts done by individuals (ie, make a drug that many people have a crime, and now you have more crime and more criminals).

I would say the stop and frisk scandal was pretty bad. I don't live there though and a lot of people moving out probably are tired of the economic inequality more than anything else.

For clarity reasons I would like to start by saying most of my knowledge is based on New York City and not the state as a whole, though most of the people in the state live in the city so this is alright in my eyes. New York City currently is one of the most bloated budgets in terms of taxes in the country. With all if those people presumably paying taxes for the city they live in you would think they wouldn’t have to charge each person so much to live there. NYC has a rampant homeless issue, and an overbudgeted, militarized police force to deal with them and normal citizens. Even with such a big police force they can’t do shit about the crime in the city. Ghettos in the burbs have little police presence because they don’t want to deal with the actual crime in the city, they would rather take the easy route of bullying homeless people trying to sleep. Speaking of crime in the city, overregulation on firearms ensure only criminals have access to anything, plus they do not have a right to stand ground law, leaving New Yorkers with one option if they were to be robbed at gun point. New York politicians would rather earn brownie points with constituants than do anything useful, leading to nothing happening and normal people suffering, and then leaving.

Gun rights is the easiest example

You are legally allowed to own guns in NY state. When I lived in NY most people i knew owned at least one gun, though this was in a rural area.

Only because the federal supreme court forced them too

So you accept that people in NY have gun rights, and thus your initial explanation is invalid.

So, which is it? You have no gun rights in New York, or you’re forced to own a gun? You can’t even keep your story straight, lol. 

Do you mind sharing this supreme court decision? I was unaware guns were ever entirely illegal in NY.

Ahhh, I see you forgot about New Jersey…..more taxes and less liberties than New York.

And New Jersey even increased its population.

Yeah, all people from the city.

Yeah, I’d be curious what percentage dipped from the city and moved to the burbs in Jersey. Might be the big dip, would make sense also with it being a Covid hotspot a few years ago, but nevermind all that.

Compared to NYC, New Jersey is overall cheaper to live in. For the people who really need to live in the big apple but want to move out of its tax reach New Jersey is the best and only option they have.

Give me your top 3 American places to live, where taxes are fair and liberties flow freely in all directions--I'm looking to move soon

Though it’s losing population on this map, West Virginia is nice if you’re okay with the rural towns and stuff. Montana is nice with the same drawbacks, and Tennessee has three major population areas with low income taxes, but high property taxes, but that’s alright since property out there is cheap snd big.

Virginia? Vermont also has a lot of freedom with guns and weed if that's your thing but there aren't many jobs.

Virginia?! The freedom part sounds nice but you're still in Virginia, lol

Vermont? Too cold, plus no jobs like you said

Guess I'm gonna have to make some sacrifices in order to have it all. Freedom isn't free, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What's wrong with VA? Northern VA is one of the best places to live on the planet. High pay with low taxes, lower COL than NYC or SF but similar quality of life. Charlottesville is also really nice.

He just wanted to go, “welp guess there really is nowhere might as well live in the urban hell hole with high taxes and politicians that do nothing.”

Not sure one example is representative (sure not, but alas) - anyone watching Louis Rossman (MacBook repair expert) knows he left NY with disgust, and now runs his business in another state