Manhattan Retains Residents As Urban Counties Reduce Exodus

It turns out that the pandemic hasn’t stopped individuals, particularly immigrants, from looking for success among Manhattan’s grimy streets and neon signs.

According to population estimates released on Thursday by the U.S., the county that includes Manhattan, it gained more than 17,000 residents in the year ending in July after losing over 111,000 people the previous year and counting Houses.

The early decrease was one of the worst urban population losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Compared to a year earlier, New York County was one of several significant urban counties in the United States that either added residents or slowed the rate of population reductions.

King County, Washington, home to Seattle; sizable Sunbelt counties like Dallas County, Texas; and two South Florida counties, Miami-Dade and Broward, all significantly reversed population losses.

International immigration led to gains in each location, a commonality among them all.

According to Christine Hartley, a representative of the Census Bureau, “the migration and growth patterns for counties edged closer to pre-pandemic levels this year.”

Migration is the primary cause of population change in the United States, domestically as people move around and internationally as people immigrate. If births outnumber deaths or vice versa also affects this.

Phoenix’s home county, Maricopa County in Arizona, saw the most significant increase in population last year—nearly 57,000—of any county in the United States.

The main factor was domestic migration. Houston’s home county, Harris County, Texas, followed suit with over 45,000 new residents, 20,000 emigrations, and natural population growth. Regarding population growth, Collin County, Texas, a suburb of Dallas in the north, came in third with more than 44,000 additional people, most of whom were from other U.S. counties.

With 9.7 million individuals, Los Angeles County has the largest population in the country.

Yet, over 90,000 residents left the county last year as Angelenos moved to other areas. One encouraging statistic is that domestic migration losses were 20% lower than they were the year before.

Cook County, Illinois, home to Chicago and the second most populous county in the country, experienced the subsequent most significant population decrease. People are leaving also contributed to the transformation.

Many counties in the San Francisco and San Jose area experienced dramatic population decreases from July 2020 to July 2021, primarily due to IT employees working from home. These declines were considerably less pronounced in 2022.

Last year, Los Angeles County, Harris County, and Miami-Dade County, Florida, saw the most significant number of immigrants from outside.

Harris County, Los Angeles County, and Dallas County were the most significant natural increases.

As a result of deaths exceeding births, three Florida counties—Pinellas, Sarasota, and Volusia—led the nation in realistic reductions. The median age in Florida is 42.7, making it one of the highest in the country.

International migration and domestic migration, to a lesser extent and more births than deaths, were the main drivers of growth in Manhattan’s New York County.

Birth, death, and migration data are the basis for all population estimates.

Despite the most recent gains, New York County was still experiencing a population deficit of almost 98,000 people as of last July compared to April 2020, when COVID-19 spread rapidly across the U.S. and the metropolitan area became an epicenter of the virus, forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee.

County populations in the vicinity kept declining in 2017. With losses of between 40,000 and 50,000 people, the three counties, including the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, experienced one of the most significant population drops in the nation.