On a percentage basis, New York, Illinois, Louisiana, and California lost the most population between 2020 and 2023.
Chartr reports New York Lost the Most Population of any State Since 2020.
Movin’ out
Even as the Covid years recede further in the collective rearview mirror, it seems that many New Yorkers are still running back the pandemic play of ditching the city that never sleeps to set up life elsewhere. Last year, NYC lost a further 78,000 citizens, taking the net population decrease to over 546,000 since April 2020.
Data from the Census Bureau shows that the declines haven’t just been contained to the 5 boroughs either: New York posted the largest drop of any state over the last 3 years, down 2.7% since 2020 to 19.6 million. That slide in citizenship makes it the biggest loser over the period by some distance, with second-place Illinois losing just 1.9% of its population and Louisiana & California shedding 1.7% and 1.4%, respectively.
Changes of state
The story playing out across the US more broadly, however, is much different. 60% of American counties posted annual population gains rather than losses in 2023, according to Census data published yesterday, up from 52% the year before.
That trend has seriously translated in states like Idaho, Florida, South Carolina, and Texas, where citizen headcounts have grown 4.3% to 6.2% since 2020, as fewer deaths and a return to pre-pandemic immigration levels saw the US population tick up by 1.6 million last year.
Absolute Basis Losers
- New York: -631,104
- California: -573,019
- Illinois: -263,780
- Louisiana: -84,036
- Pennsylvania: -41,105
Blue State Exodus
None of this is a surprise. A possible explanation for Louisiana is Biden’s misguided energy policy.
Texas gained 1,357,842 and Florida gained 1,072,510. Georgia was third with a gain of 315,456.
Andrew Cuomo vs. Andrew Cuomo
For the hoot of the day, please consider Andrew Cuomo vs. Andrew Cuomo
Is Andrew Cuomo suffering from long Covid? He seems to have forgotten and repudiated much of what he did during his 10 years as Governor of New York. See his amnesiac op-ed in the New York Post this week.
Mr. Cuomo called for suspending New York City’s congestion tax, which he championed and signed into law in 2019.
Mr. Cuomo may not recall, but he campaigned in 2010 on a promise to let the state’s millionaire’s tax lapse. He extended it again and again. Surprise, surprise, millionaires moved. “Tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich. We did that. God forbid the rich leave!” Mr. Cuomo fretted in February 2019. His epiphany lapsed.
In April 2021, he signed legislation raising the top income-tax rate in New York City to 14.8% from 12.7%—as the city was starting to recuperate from his disastrous Covid lockdowns. Mr. Cuomo pledged in March 2020 that he wouldn’t let then mayor Bill de Blasio lock down the city. Not long afterwards, Mr. Cuomo locked down the state.
New York City’s recovery also hasn’t been helped by the 2019 rent-control law Mr. Cuomo signed. Landlords have removed hundreds of thousands of apartments from the market because they can’t make money renting them out. As a result, rents have skyrocketed. Maybe the city wouldn’t have to pay $388 a day per migrant—you read that right—to shelter migrants if they could afford housing.
Meanwhile, in Illinois …
Chicago Teachers’ Union Seeks $50 Billion Despite $700 Million City Deficit
Please note the Chicago Teachers’ Union Seeks $50 Billion Despite $700 Million City Deficit
If you live in Illinois, get the hell out before unions take every penny you have.
Need to make sure those states also lose congressional seats. People move so should the number of congressman from those states.
San Francisco has lost about 12% of its population, yet it still has a “housing crisis.” Go figure.
I disagree with the argument against rent control. If you were to abolish that law, the landlords would just list their horded apartments at the exorbitant market rate. It doesn’t make sense that they’re sitting on inventory making $0 a month. And even if they are, I invite them to sell their property and get a productive job rather than being rent seekers.
Total silliness.
Q: Where is the supply of houses the least?
A: Places with rent control.
There’s externalities aside from buyer / seller supply and demand. As I see it, people make their fortune using funny money in the stock market then they use that to buy real estate which drives the price up for everyone. Austin, TX doesn’t have rent control and still saw its housing prices skyrocket.
To Publius: I have no sympathy for someone who makes their living by collecting rent.
Why?
You and chairman mao don’t like landlords.
Typical leftist economic ignorance fired by jealousy of productive people. Rent is what it takes to run an economy. Businesses large and small pay rent. Hotel chains pay rent. Property owners have to pay local taxes, insurance, repairs, maintenance and staff hired to manage it all, creating jobs. And contrary to the ignoramus, owners do not typically take profits in stocks to invest, they pay RENT to finance companies for funding. Both to finance acquisitions and upgrades. Creating more jobs.
I don’t know how anyone could want to be a landlord after the pandemic. Landlords were the most targeted group having to go many months without rent and not be able to evict.
What is your problem with rent seekers? You jealous?
Children of politicians getting involved in the family business tends to be like a movie sequal: worse than the first and the latter only exists because of the former and cannot stand on its own. One might suspect Mario wouldn’t be amused.
The younger Cuomo’s performance fits in well with the likes of Bush, Gore, Pelosi, et cetera. (as in films, this is not to say that the original was “good”)
Fwiw I wouldn’t classify it as an exodus. Also since when is losing population a bad thing. I grew up in Texas, lived in New England and California. Texas and Florida cannot handle the growth. I know people moving to these states complaining about the cost of living there so it looks like all that happen is the inflation got exported from some states to other states. As my dad always tells me, you don’t want 100% of the customers you can get but that’s exactly what some of these states are getting. Quality of life is very low in places like Houston and Dallas which have traffic to rival any city in the country as more employers force people back to the office.
All I see here in Northern California are a lot of out of state license plates from many faraway places. The states must be allowing.residents to renew remotely and online. Are companies using their out of state offices to help employees avoid state income tax and be employed here ? It looks that way. The AI boom is forcing venture capital back to Northern California. Salaries are spiking again like it is 2021 or 22.
so what . they can lose half their population and it will be replenished. I want to get a job in Cali and then fly back to my red state.
There are more red votes on this blog than red states.
These outmigrations from blue states to red states tend to make the red states purple. Those remaining behind in the blue states tend to be the bluest of the blue, either public employees or dependent on government payouts. Texas and Florida already have large populations so the process will be slower. But look what happened to Northern VA, North Carolina, Arizona and especially Colorado.
The worst are the transfers for large corporations.
Congratulations to all of those smart people, that got out!
SPY might rise to 560/580, before plunging to hell and dragging the boomers with them.
Most of the moves are boomers leaving for retirement. The wall street journal had a great article on it (sorry paywall). Here is a vital quote:
link to wsj.com
“From April 2020 to July 2022, the population in counties in southern Appalachia designated retirement or recreational areas grew by 3.8%—more than six times the national average, according to Hamilton Lombard, a demographer at the University of Virginia.
Lakefront houses built in recent years are for sale for as much as $3 million. Assisted-living complexes offer on-site movie theaters, piano lounges and beauty salons. Chain restaurants, box stores and medical facilities are springing up on land that only a few years ago was pasture and forest.
Arguments erupt regularly on Dawson Facebook pages over newcomer-spurred traffic, which has been a shock to the folksy culture for which this Republican-dominated county is known.”
The locals aren’t happy because they are draining already low city resources. Retired people asking others to carry the load? What could possibly go wrong?
At some point, americans will become furious at boomers getting $120 billion/month (and growing) for doing nothing while everyone else struggles, they will demand change and the war between the haves and have nots will intensify.
Ironically, the retired boomers are typically trump supports are now hated by deep red Appalachia poor folks who are also trumpers. It’s red on red hate that no one wants to talk about.
Too many “emotional” votes and comments on Mish. Ignore !
When St Vlad turns the DC Beltway and London into glowing glass ashtrays then it will be a moot point. The Boomers already got their jollies in the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Terrible of you to burst the bubble of the bad blue state narrative!
can’t believe they lost population
with so many ILLEGALS coming in
Mgt pyramids in India, China, Pakistan and Vietnam are a fraction of the cost in the US.
Businesses mix it up to cut cost. The sectors that are important to our national security expand in the US. They provide good paying jobs. Those sectors feed their satellites which pay well. Few jobs are so important they might pay $100/$150/h, including benefits. Those jobs form a Pareto chart. They are invisible to BLS.
Abbott vows to bus Haitian cannibals to Illinois and all of a sudden Governor Fatso is concerned – go figure?
link to secondcitycop.blogspot.com
That would be governor El Gordo
I’m sure they will feel right at home there.
Because Pritzker thinks he’ll be the Democratic nominee when Biden bows out (stating for health reasons – but really just to pardon Hunter) Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has finally put his foot down on the amount of money the Chicago taxpayers are going to pay for these migrants/illegals. Pritzker would have to pay out of his pocket in order to keep this off the MSM. We live in KS and our local news ran the story about Brandon Johnson evicting the migrants/illegals from the shelters starting today.
And with that exodus comes their voting patterns. Thus, red states will become blue states as political stupidity becomes more uniform across the land! ( not that either party offers anyone worth voting for).
wake up Alex. You’ve got one chance. That is to say, we’ve got one chance. Trump too crude for you? Too impolite? Are your tender sensibilities offended. Compare Trumps term to Biden’s catastrophic go at the helm.. You stay home at your own peril.
Al, you assume too much. I loved candidate Trump last time. Unfortunately, he was a huge disappointment: more interested in tax breaks than stopping illegal migration. I just wish we had someone better. But, I’ll hold my nose and vote for Trump.
Mish, your articles continue to provoke and educate. Well done.
I grew up to 17 and ran away from Illinois. CLOSE MINDED society back then.
I moved to Cal and lived there until I was 38. 21 Years of Growth in everything, including my investments there.
Cal grew thin on me. We moved. We moved from the Silly-Con valley, where the lies piled up upon lines (Contracted promises BROKEN by partners) and I took what I had left from that period and fled to the Mountains, to a conservative County up North.
Then, suddenly, I observed COUNTY officials beating the shit out of a Guy who built a beautiful Restaurant and Resort near our home, Millions and they BROW-BEAT him over the lack of a freaking Permit for a Chapel he had built.
They drove him out and we left after seeing what was happening.
POLITICS drove money away.
We left Cal and will never return.
At one time Illinois was very closed-minded. They had Adlai Stevenson, Paul Douglas and Everett Dirksen all in government at the same time.
The cost of living in Houston is cheaper than in : CA, NY and New Orleans. In the
flyover areas the cost of living is cheaper, though rising faster, much faster, lately. Home owners wouldn’t sell their Xrystal palaces. They don’t even want to rent them, if they can, for 3%/5% cap.
The cost of living in Mississippi is even cheaper, but I would not want to live there. Same goes for Houston.
What’s happening in Idaho, where I live, is the same thing that has happened elsewhere across the west: so many relatively wealthy outsiders, mainly Californians, are moving in and driving up the prices of real estate. Anymore, the only people who can afford to buy a home in Idaho are people moving in — not the locals.
Local contractors cater to these newcomers as there is much more money to be made on a 4000 sq. ft. retirement mansion than on a 1500 sq. ft. starter home.
They are coming to Idaho to retire and expire. Then what : who will buy their 4,000 sq. ft mansions.
There’s no shortage of people wanting to move to FL and they’ve been a retirement destination for a century. Idaho might be the same and time will tell.
New rich arrivals. And on it goes.
.
Oregon preceded Idaho in gentrified death. Tom McCall’s ghost wails incessantly here.
The bubble chart indicates that those in the middle are making $30/$35 per hour in wages plus $15 in benefits. They cost $50/h ==> that’s $400/day, or $104,000/Y.
The top bubbles cost more than $70/hour ==> $560/day, or $150,000/Y for full time jobs.
That’s unsustainable. Businesses might cut full time jobs, but that isn’t good enough. Businesses cannot compete with the gov nor with China or India. They are squeezed
between the gov and foreign producers.
The blue state recipe for failure: exponentially increasing liabilities from liberal social policy + eroding tax bases.
Have fun being the 21st century version of the Rust Belt in a few years.
Blue states subsidize red states and have been doing so consistently. If they turn into the rust belt, either red states turn into dust or, through blue state migration they’ll get a large enough tax base to subsidize the former blue states.
I hear this complaint constantly but when I ask those complaining what programs would you cut or eliminate to abolish this inequity the answer is …. crickets.
Most of the programs leading to this asymmetry were inaugurated and supported by democrats.
So blow it out your ass!
California claims it’s all OK because they recorded an increase in millionaires. I dunno. But above all others, no one should live in Illinois, the state is not economically viable.
Illinois is brutal with Humidity and Mosquitos in Summer times and brutal COLD and wind (near Chicago) in the winter. SO, I turned to Cal.
Now CAL is not affordable by any measure. They EAT your money to pay Government Pensions.
BOTH ILLINOIS and CAL are a mess.
Not losing people. Sending out missionaries and conquistadors to repeat the process in places like Utah. All this has happened before. It will happen again.
Concur. These “ex-pat” liberal-minded Californians will bring their misguided worldview to the unfortunate red states that they move to. I once saw a bumper sticker that read, “The only thing worse than a Californian is an ex-Californian.”
which is why, when it quit being the land of fruit and nuts (oranges, almonds) and became the land of fruits and nuts. I left. moved enough times I don’t have to claim it except on my birth certificate
Good for you. Btw, it’s your parents’ fault, not yours. 🙂
I read an article about a year ago in the Washington Post, gag me with a spoon, about the influx of people moving to Texas. The article was titled, ‘Are Californians going to save Texas?’ The unfortunate reality for Democrats is far more conservatives than liberals are leaving Blue states and moving to Texas. Texas is not leaning purple by any measure and won’t be any time soon.
Apparently, rich areas lose people, either by people moving out and/or by women not having babies.
Fly in the ointment: These population numbers may not include “undocumented” people.
Anyway, some of this trend is probably part of the inexorable, work-from-wherever-you-want trend.
Somebody needs to explain to me how California could lose a half million residents and housing prices and rents still go up by 20% plus
What the market will bear. Californians are making good money. In America, extra money goes to housing, medical, taxes, and schools. And they obey the general form of Parkinson’s Law.
Because the people leaving CA are leaving because they don’t have any money. They don’t even count.
New Orleans is the #1 in murder rate in the nation. During hurricane Katrina NO residents shot police who came to rescue them. The secret service told GW Bush not to land in this crazy place.
Firstly, this doesn’t pass the moron test. What DID happen, is that police shot at residents trying to flee the flooding city. Danzinger bridge shootings.
bs
I know a couple with children who recently moved from Louisiana, the state of their birth and where generations of family still reside. They said that the white-black race tension is becoming untenable. They are white.
There’s one big problem here besides higher earners leaving. Therefore, higher-paying taxpayers are leaving. It is what politics the newcomers bring to the new state.
I have mentioned this before, and Mike, you criticized the comment, but these new voters don’t change their political stripes that easily. Here in Colorado, we’ve had immigrants for years coming from these blue states mentioned, and they changed our political demographics from red to blue. And now we have a stupid Supreme Court packed with all-blue judges as the nation watched our embarrassing display of judicial incompetence.
It is hard to imagine the imbecilic politics that prompted these people to leave their state, yet many, if not most, continue voting the same in their new state. It seems the wedge issues like abortion keep them entangled in the same party ideology and voting pattern; that’s my guess anyway.
But one thing is for sure: these political lefties, particularly the hard left over the last fifteen years, have destroyed my beautiful state with their political demagogues.
Women lib to the back of the line. Once in charge the fake liberals will be more conservative than u are.
“It is what politics the newcomers bring to the new state.
…… these new voters don’t change their political stripes that easily”
This is true.
.
earlier they moved up the coast from california to oregon, then washington. sadly, could only watch it happen, then I moved on
When I lived in Flahridah, the northerners often told us how they did things “up north”.
Former marine Daniel Penny, who choked a black a mentally ill man in NY subway last Nov, had a good day on Fri. His case was dismissed. The black guy who helped him wasn’t even charges.
Yesterday a mentally ill man provoked Yunis Obaude and pulled a gun after a
woman stabbed him in the back. Obaude grabbed the gun and shot the mentally ill.
He will not be charged.
The police team who choked George Floyd and the ex police/ security man, in GA, who shot a black “runner” who grabbed his gun ==> rot in jail for life.
George Floyd was not choked. They were holding him down by the shoulder in the medically prescribed manner to keep him calm until the ambulance came because the career thug was overdosing from a self administered amount of fentanyl
But keep repeating the lies of the deep state so you have more crime. And call a social worker when a murderer or rapist threatens you or your family.
Dr, looked at the picture : Derek Chauvin knee compressed George Floyd main artery in the neck, between his right shoulder and his right ear. The
head is down sideways. G.F. didn’t move bc he never learnt “SHAOLIN”.
Neither MN or NYC police, who were pushed like sacks of potatoes by Obama strike force.
NYC capillaries (subway) are clogged with mentally ill and homeless people. The people who open the city early in the morning and those who leave late at night are
afraid to ride. They cannot afford to drive and park. The mentally ill fight and shoot people that don’t look like their type. NY national guard moved underground to the subway. Police check bags.
Illegal aliens will make up for any population losses in these states.
These states deserve them and the narrow tax base that they bring with them.
I smell YUGE budget deficits in these states!
A few years ago I saw a statement that if you own property in Illinois, … the value of it is destined to go down, as government keeps increasing the property tax. Just like a New Yorker who is the landlord of a rent-controlled building. A total loss is baked into the future.
Supply and demand is keeping the housing prices up in IL. Properties continue to sell OVER asking price even though property taxes continue to increase. We just sold our condo in IL last month and got A LOT more money for it than we thought we could. We didn’t even publicly put our house on the market or use a realtor. We moved to a red state.
IL is losing people at a slower rate tho. Do we get any points for that? 🙂 I just started retirement this year and will save about $4000 in state income taxes since all retirement income in IL (just like FL and TX) is exempt from tax. Doesnt help the state but it doesnt hurt me.
Please continue to paint a target on your favorite tax breaks. Better for the broke politicians to smell the potential revenue in your area and leave the rest of us alone! 😃
They’ll take your $4,000 savings in state income taxes by increasing property taxes, county taxes and “fees”. Get out of IL.
Love the extrapolatin’.
Denser populations lose more people, that’s simple math.
I could make the argument that a Trailor park in TX is the best place to live because no one has moved out in a decade, its population has remained 20 for ten years straight.
It’s also possible Baby-boomers seek rural area’s to retire, and they’re retiring at a faster rate than births.
Nah, that conclusion isn’t suitable, it’s Biden, it’s gotta be.
.
.
Percentages and demographics don’t agree with the story line
Which is probably why he used percentages instead of raw numbers. There is no particular reason these places should be losing population now. They were densely populated before and weren’t losing people.
Florida is more densely populated than any of those proggy paradises, and yet they gain population.
Perhaps it’s just that progressivism has finally come to fruition, and nobody likes the outcome.
“Florida is more densely populated than any of those proggy paradises, and yet they gain population.”
Baby-boomers.
FL has been #1 in population density since 2010 at least. Not everything you disagree with, or which is objectively bad is woke, DEI, progressive etc. Reducing your reasoning to blaming does speak volumes about you.
Always good to respond to a comment with utter gibberish. I never said everything I disagree with is progressive. I simply pointed out the egregious error in the other persons comment, and speculated that the correlation between citizens fleeing and progressive policy may be relevant.
Maybe everyone is just starting to recognize you people suck, you are authoritarian, and your policies don’t work.
No, blame Hitler. If it wasn’t for WWII there wouldn’t have been a baby boom.