Most of us spent the past few days reflecting on the last year (or decade, if you’re super ambitious!), but the country isn’t just looking back on memories—it’s analyzing 2019 in data.
The U.S. Census Bureau just released their annual report regarding population estimates, and it revealed that New York state had the highest numeric loss of population out of all 50 states. Overall, the nation’s growth continued to slow down in 2019.
New York state was one of the 10 states in the country that lost population between 2018 and 2019, with a loss of 76,790 people, or 0.4%. It was followed by Illinois at 51,250 (0.4%) and West Virginia at 12,144 (0.7%). West Virginia had the largest decrease in percentage.
They also reported that 27 states plus Washington D.C. lost population through net domestic migration (IE: moving to other states). New York lost 180,649 residents to new states—the only state topping it was California, with a loss of 203,414 residents.
New York was also among the 42 states that had fewer births in 2019 than in 2018. For the first time in decades, “natural increase”—which is when the number of births is greater than the number of deaths—dropped below 1 million for the U.S.
More specifics about cities, including NYC, will be released later in 2020. You can read the full release on their website here.
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