The population of Manhattan increased last year, reversing the exodus out of New York City and into other states and the city’s suburbs during the pandemic.
The borough added nearly 17,500 residents in the year ending last July, according to new data released by the Census Bureau this week. That gain is an astonishing turnaround from the year before, which featured nearly 100,000 moving out of the region.
CITIES GRAPPLE WITH MAJOR CHANGES THREE YEARS AFTER PANDEMIC
The growth was fueled in large part by international migration rather than growing births or domestic migration. Nearly 3,000 of the new residents came from other areas of the United States, while there were also 3,292 more births than deaths during that stretch. Meanwhile, there was a net increase of nearly 11,000 residents from overseas.
That 12-month period marks the first time in more than two decades that Manhattan has had a net gain in domestic migration, according to the New York Times.
The coronavirus pandemic has upended urban centers. After two-week stay-at-home orders morphed into two months and then became indefinite for many white-collar workers in big cities, employees decided to take advantage of the flexibility of remote work and relocated.
Population hubs such as New York City saw big outflows, but so did cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Many people moved to areas that were a bit less urban and offered a better lifestyle and a lower cost of living. Places such as South Florida, parts of Texas, and even more rural locales such as Idaho saw influxes.
But last year, it became clear that the worst of the pandemic was largely behind in America as annual events began to operate at full capacity, travel increased, and some companies began calling their workers back into the office from the far-flung destinations they settled in after the pandemic took hold.
Office entries in downtown areas across the country are clocking in at 48.4% of their pre-pandemic levels in the past week, according to Kastle Systems, which tracks security swipes into buildings in 10 large cities. New York City is at 47%.
Christine Hartley of the Census Bureau noted in a statement this week that even outside of Manhattan, overall patterns of population growth and decline are moving toward pre-pandemic trends. Some areas of the country that saw big new outflows during the first year or so of the pandemic are seeing those declines slow, and in the case of places such as Manhattan, reverse course.
“The migration and growth patterns for counties edged closer to pre-pandemic levels this year,” Hartley said. “Some urban counties, such as Dallas and San Francisco, saw domestic outmigration at a slower pace between 2021 and 2022, compared to the prior year.”
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New York’s city government said that the latest data, which captured population growth up to July of last year, doesn’t even capture the full magnitude of Manhattan’s rebound. A City Hall source told the New York Post that a large influx of asylum-seekers to the city didn’t even begin until last spring.
“New York City was hit hard by the pandemic, but New Yorkers are resilient, and our recovery is strong,” a spokesperson for New York Mayor Eric Adams's office said. “We’ve regained 99% of the jobs lost during the pandemic, Manhattan is growing, and population trends are returning to pre-pandemic norms. We are optimistic that 2023 will continue to bring great news for the future of New York City.”