According to recently released Census numbers, NYC’s population has increased by over 629,000 people (almost 8 percent) since 2010!
With lots of talk of residents leaving NYC in droves this past year, as well as an (unwelcome) claim that “New York is dead,” it comes as a welcome surprise. The population has soared to 8.8 million, a record number.
Though the number is quite substantial, city officials told the New York Times most of it is can be attributed to being able to get a much more accurate count than in prior years.
In the past few years, New York’s Department of City Planning has made sure that the Census Bureau was aware of 265,000 housing units that were previously unrecorded. Some were new builds, while others were deemed “hard to find.”
“This allowed the Census Bureau to enumerate half a million people which they would have otherwise missed,” Arun Peter Lobo, New York City’s chief demographer told the Times. “Because we told them, they knew exactly where to go.”
He noted that it stands against the long-predicted “decline” of NYC, one that became a major topic of conversation during the pandemic. Of course, he noted that a lot of this growth did occur pre-COVID, but that it the numbers were still quite notable. “Adding over 600,000 people is like adding the population of Miami,” he continued. “It’s huge.”
Welcome to NYC to 600,000 new New Yorkers! The more the merrier. 🗽 pic.twitter.com/pQpooKBWY4
— NYC Mayor's Office (@NYCMayorsOffice) August 13, 2021
As for which boroughs were most affected? All five grew, and Brooklyn and Queens had the biggest number of total residents. The Bronx also hit a new record of 1.47 million residents.
And, with these most recent census numbers, NYC officially makes up almost 44 percent of New York State’s total population!