The Big Apple is getting smaller, based on new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
New York City’s population lost nearly 78,000 residents in 2023, according to a report in the New York Times. The year before, more than 126,000 residents moved out. Between April 2020 to July 2023, the city lost nearly 550,000 residents, which was more than 6% of its population.
That’s not to say the city has turned into a ghost town – the current population is 8.26 million, making it the largest city in the nation. Still, that’s down from the record 8.8 million recorded in pre-pandemic early 2020.
City officials are disputing the new data by highlighting the influx of illegal immigrants. Casey Berkovitz, a spokesperson for the Department of City Planning, pointed out that 180,000 illegal immigrants came into the city since the spring of 2022, with 64,600 still in the city’s care. Berkovitz added the planning department is going to be “working with the Census Bureau to adjust the estimate.”
Four of the city’s five boroughs recorded population declines last year, with only Manhattan, the richest borough, recording population growth – albeit only about 3,000 residents in 2023. As for those leaving the city, nonprofit Fiscal Policy Institute determined that most of the outbound migration in 2022 were families making between $32,000 and $65,000, with a disproportionately large number of Black and Hispanic residents moving out.
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550,000 people is the size of Staten Island
Tell Mayor Adams not to worry, Biden’s open border policy will easily replenish those tax paying, legal residents that are leaving. The Big Apple is fast losing is appeal to the rational thinking, crime hating Americans.
This happened there in the early 1990’s. A real law and order candidate rose up and turned the city around.
That’s great news that NYC may see a falling population!
It would do NYC good, as a lower population is the only way for NYC to become more affordable.
The U.S. and the world would be much better off if there were far fewer people, lower future birth rates that would actually flatten the population curve and then see lower human numbers into the future. With fewer people there would be more resources per person, less congestion, less competition for space and housing, and more affordable living conditions, and with more open space and wild lands for nature to thrive and to provide the free services that it once provided when the human population was much lower.
When I was a child, fish was considered “poor people food”. Wild salmon and even abalone were abundant and very affordable. Because of rising human population, salmon are in peril and salmon fishing is often prohibited, and falling salmon numbers are not just due to fishing, it is also due to more humans taking more of the water from rivers needed by salmon to spawn. Now, when wild salmon is available, it is now very, very expensive. Farm raised salmon is a bit less expensive but is lower quality and is also polluting the oceans in and near those fish farms.
Abalone is NOT allowed to be sold for the past many decades because it was depleted due to too many humans and our impacts on the ocean resources (including by killing otter and by pollution).
The Real Estate Industry pushes more human population growth and endless development, often under the guise of claiming to want affordable housing. But housing, even low income housing, is not affordable for many people and is only available for the few low income lottery winners.
In reality, it is human Over-Population that is causing home prices to rise higher and higher, with some blame also due to huge investor groups buying up about 20% of home sales, but investor groups would NOT be interested in buying up housing IF the human population was lower and home prices were affordable and would not rent at high rates.
High human numbers is driving both problems (high cost of housing, high rents, and thus driving financial incentives for investor groups to buy up housing).
Housing was pretty affordable up until the 1980’s, but then the rising human population pressures finally pushed many markets out of reach of many people. When I was young, housing in Malibu and Del Mar (California) was affordable on a minimum wage salary!
But Human Over-Population has put most coastal markets into prices affordable only to high income ranges, and much of inland California is now also very expensive. The emigrants leaving California (and other densely over-populated states) have moved to less populated states, and now those states have seen home prices skyrocket out of reach for many people in those states too. Atlanta, Georgia now has higher traffic congestion than Los Angeles!
Why with all the obvious impacts of Human Over-Population do we keep buying the lie?
Humans have been indoctrinated to believe that human populaiton should keep rising and all will be better, but that is a lie! We have the same problems because of it and now at far larger scales! It is a ridiculous belief system because it has never been sustainable, and the proof has been the never ending resource impacts that have spread around the globe and even into the deep oceans and into the atmosphere that is now experiencing insanely high CO2 levels that are warming the planet causing our oceans to be 50% more acidic than they were 100 years ago, which is really bad for most ocean life, including fish!
Humans have many thousands of years of history of over-populating their resource base.
Technology improvements have allowed more resource extractions over larger areas, thus sustaining more people, for a while, until all those rising human over-population impacts, once again, stripped out resources.
This is why humans have migrated around the world in search of virgin or low populated areas with more resources. Europe’s over-population by the late 1400’s blew out around the world and resulted in 500+ years of tidal waves of European immigrants that devastated indigenous people on several continents (including North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc.), but Europeans continued to have lots of children in the colonized continents, thus pillaging the resources and, in the U.S., this pushed migrations of more people westward and also into Alaska and Hawaii.
Immigrants from other regions of the world have added to the population of the U.S. rising, but it was Europeans who drove the population growth engine for most of the history of this nation.
Now the U.S. has over 340 million people, but we use 25% of the global resources used by humans. Thus, the U.S. has resource impacts of a nation of 2 Billion people, more than any other nation and more than all of Africa. Thus, the U.S. is the most over-populated nation due to our high numbers but also due to our high consumer demands.
The world has now passed 8 Billion humans (16x more humans than in the 1500’s).
And, despite lower birth rates in most nations, the number of births (globally) is still higher than the number of deaths each year, so the population is still rising on an exponentially steep curve that is projected to hit 10.875 Billion by year 2087.
That means that in just 63 years from now, the world is projected to ADD nearly 2.9 billion MORE humans (equal to adding the global human population of 1958) to our already ridiculously high 8 Billion humans today. It’s insanity, but most of our policies give incentive to have more children, so we are causing this population growth by our active policies.
If you think global impacts are bad now, just wait. If you think illegal immigration is high now, just wait. If you think food and housing and energy prices are high now, just wait.
If you think AI and Robots are taking your job, it will get worse because employers and companies do NOT want to pay the high wages that will be needed for human employees to earn enough to pay for decent living conditons in decent places that are far too expensive due to too many people.
Despite all the media hysteria, there are only some nations that are now seeing very slow population declines, and those nations will benefit by less human impacts and more affordable living conditions. The reason that the media is screaming “danger” is that corporations, many religious organizations, and politicians want people to be over-populated and short of resources so that prices can be pushed higher, and desperate people will do anything for a job and will accept inadequate pay just to eat.
Most global businesses are drunk in ONE business plan which is built upon never ending population growth and always rising consumer demands. That is why corporations and many other groups whose power and wealth depends on rising human numbers (and resource shortages that push prices higher) are freaking out about slowing birth rates.
But we all will pay a huge price for a failed belief system.
Human Over-Population is WHY the cost of living is so high now and getting worse.
Human Over-Population is WHY resources are scarce when they were once abundant.
Human Over-Population leads to resource depletion and hyper competition over WHO will control resources, power, and wealth.
Human Over-Population leads to deep class divisions, bigotries, greed, wars, and mass human migrations.
Human Over-Population leads to Factory Farms and all its dangers to humans and its cruelty to the animals.
Human Over-Population is wiping out WILD species and WILD ecosystems, and most of our great science (Biotech) depends upon those species and them living in healthy WILD ecosystems.
Human Over-Population is deforesting the globe, but forests shunt 40% to 70% of rainfall across continents through photosynthesis, which produces water vapor with each Oxygen molecule produced, and that water vapor makes clouds that drift inland and produce rain and snow. So, Deforestation due to human over-population is also drying out large regions of the world, which is harming people and the food systems too.
No politician and No corporations can be fully blamed for the birth rate choices that people make. We have created our own problems by choosing to believe that more humans will solve our problems, when the reality is that too many people has caused nearly all of our human problems and environmental problems.
Due to Human Over-Population, the food supplies are in peril and getting creepier, with artificial foods (made entirely in factories from stem cells) now becoming a requirement because the usual agricultural systems cannot sustain our huge human numbers.
Humans and our huge numbers have depleted over 50% global fresh water supplies and destroyed over 50% of arable soils. Over 50% of global Plant Biomass has been removed to make way for more and more people and all the stuff that we want.
Deforestation is the #2 cause of climate warming, so climate warming will continue even IF we go to 100% clean renewable energy, it will just happen at a slower warming rate.
Tax dollars in the billions are being paid to oil companies to sequester carbon into the ground, but only 3% is actually being sequestered but that CO2 is at risk of leaking back up into the atmosphere, which can sicken and even kill any oxygen breathing species IF that CO2 is trapped in a small area (like a dip or valley), and CO2 sinks because it is heavier than air.
Deforestation is still happening, and more people means less plant biomass, which means less oxygen produced. So, 50 or 100 years from now, you may be paying a corporation to produce your daily oxygen canister because those wild ecosystems with all those plants will not be here anymore to make that oxygen for free, and the oceans (where half the oxygen is produced) likely will be damaged to the point where phytoplankton numbers will be lower, thus making less oxygen.
So, we either suck up the reality of Human Over-Population and challenge the ruling belief system, or we become slaves to corporations to produce all that nature once produced for FREE.
I had zero kids to try to bend the population curve lower, but more people need to do the same. Remove the child tax credit, or flip it to pay people to have only 0 to 1 child per couple. That is the only way to push human numbers lower and our quality of life higher and affordable for all and to restore nature to a state of abundance.
Congratulations to South Korea for having the lowest birth rate this year.
Good for you!