Moving Out of NYC in 2026: What the Migration Data Actually Shows
Every few months a headline announces that New Yorkers are fleeing the city. Then another one announces that the city is booming again. Both cannot be right, and if you are actually deciding whether to move, neither one helps you.
So we spent three months going through the primary sources. Census Bureau estimates, NYC Department of City Planning population files, IRS county-to-county migration data, and StreetEasy rent and demand figures. Not summaries of those sources. The releases themselves.
This page is the short version, with the current numbers. The three full reports are linked at the bottom.
We are a moving company, so we will say the obvious thing up front: we move people. That does not change what the data says, and where the data disagreed with what we assumed, we published the data.
The Headline Number
As of July 1, 2025, New York City’s population was 8,584,629.
A year earlier it was 8,596,825. So the city ended the year down 12,196 people, about one tenth of one percent. In a city of eight and a half million, that is close to flat.
The interesting part is underneath it. Three forces moved in different directions:
- Net domestic migration: -113,718
- International migration: +65,824
- Natural increase: +53,983 (90,084 births, 36,101 deaths)
Those components do not sum exactly to the net change, and that is expected. City Planning notes directly that the pieces “may not sum to the total population change because of a residual produced in the estimation process.” We are flagging it rather than quietly rounding the numbers until they line up.
So yes, a large number of people moved from New York City to somewhere else in the United States. And no, the city did not empty out, because arrivals from abroad and births almost entirely replaced them.
Source: NYC Department of City Planning, Vintage 2025 population estimates.
The Borough Scoreboard
The citywide number hides real differences between boroughs.
- Staten Island +1,718 (+0.3%)
- The Bronx +280 (0.0%)
- Manhattan -648 (0.0%)
- Brooklyn -4,694 (-0.2%)
- Queens -8,852 (-0.4%)
Queens lost the most people. Staten Island grew the most. Manhattan and the Bronx were effectively unchanged.
Where People Actually Went
This is the finding that surprised us most, and it is the one that should matter to you if you are weighing a move.
Roughly half of the people who left New York City did not leave the region at all. The largest destinations were the places you can reach on a commuter train.
- Nassau County, NY: about 20,600 net loss to NYC
- Hudson County, NJ: about 13,219 departures
- Westchester County, NY: about 11,200 net loss
- Bergen County, NJ: about 10,500 departures
- Suffolk County, NY: about 8,550 net loss
New Jersey as a whole took about 63,800 departures. Florida, the state that dominates the “everyone is leaving” headlines, took about 38,400, with Miami-Dade accounting for roughly 4,050 of the net.
Source: IRS Statistics of Income county-to-county migration data, tax year 2022, as analyzed by PropertyShark.
The Door Swings Both Ways
Migration coverage almost always counts departures and ignores arrivals. The return flow is substantial:
- Nassau County to NYC: 12,692
- Westchester to NYC: 9,564
- Suffolk to NYC: 7,323
- New Jersey to NYC: about 23,800
- California to NYC: about 16,000
- Los Angeles to NYC: about 5,400
More people moved from California to New York City than the raw “leaving New York” coverage would ever suggest.
Source: IRS Statistics of Income, tax year 2022.
What Most New Yorkers Do Instead of Leaving
When we went down to the neighborhood level, the pattern got clearer. People priced out of a neighborhood overwhelmingly do not leave the city. They move to the neighborhood next door, the one that is one stop further out and several hundred dollars cheaper.
- Long Island City $4,345 → Sunnyside $2,695
- West Village $5,950 → East Village $4,650
- Park Slope $4,400 → Windsor Terrace $3,800
- Bushwick $3,650 → Ridgewood $3,205
Same trains. Often the same park. Between $445 and $1,650 a month back.
Rent figures are StreetEasy median asking rents. Sunnyside, East Village, Windsor Terrace, Ridgewood and Long Island City are from the 2026 Neighborhoods to Watch list (2025 data published in January 2026, as the list read in October 2026); Bushwick, Park Slope and West Village were pulled from live StreetEasy pages in August 2026. Both vintages are disclosed in the full report.
The Honest Version of “Should I Leave New York?”
The data does not tell you whether to move. It does tell you that the two loudest stories are both wrong.
New York is not emptying out. Domestic out-migration is real and large, but immigration and births have been replacing it, and the net change last year was a fraction of a percent.
And leaving is not the only lever. Half the people who left stayed inside the metro area, and the single most common affordability move in this city is a few subway stops, not a few states.
If your problem is your rent, the cheapest fix is usually the shortest move.
Read the Full Reports
Part 1: Is Everyone Really Leaving New York? What the 2025 Data Actually Says
The myth-buster. Where the “everyone is leaving” number comes from and what it leaves out.
Part 2: Where New Yorkers Actually Moved in 2025
The destination map. Borough by borough, county by county, including the return flow.
Part 3: NYC’s Priced-Out Map: 4 Affordable NYC Neighborhoods Right Next to the Expensive Ones
The neighborhood zoom. Four rent gaps you can actually act on.
Sources and Method
Every figure on this page traces to a named primary source:
- NYC Department of City Planning, Vintage 2025 population estimates
- US Census Bureau population estimates
- IRS Statistics of Income, county-to-county migration, tax year 2022
- StreetEasy median asking rent and search demand data
- Bank of America Institute, January 2026
Two things we are careful about, because most coverage is not. First, search interest is not migration. A neighborhood with rising StreetEasy searches is not a neighborhood people have moved to. Second, IRS migration data runs several years behind. Our county figures come from the IRS release published in 2024 (tax year 2022), and we label them rather than implying they are current. The IRS published newer county data in March 2026, and next year’s edition will use it.
Where a figure has been revised since we first published it, we say so rather than quietly changing it.
This report is updated annually. Journalists and researchers are welcome to cite it. If you need a figure broken out differently, contact us and we will pull it.
If You Are Planning a Move
Whichever direction the data points, the move itself is the part we handle. All five boroughs, seven days a week, plus the Northeast corridor.
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