By Bill Hammond, EmpireCenter.org
New York State added just 1,008 new residents last year as its post-pandemic recovery ground to a near standstill, newly released Census Bureau estimates show.
The population increase of just one-half of 1 percent in made New York the sixth-slowest growing state in the most recently analyzed period, covering July 2024 to July 2025.
The state’s estimated population of just over 20 million was down by about 120,000 or 0.6 percent since 2020, the bureau said. That was the fifth-slowest growth rate through the first half of the decade, a sign that New York is likely to lose further seats in Congress, and in the Electoral College, after the next decennial census in 2030.
The trend of weakening growth is symptom of economic stagnation that should be a wake-up call for New York’s elected leaders, starting with Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani.
As usual, the bureau revised its 2020 through 2024 population estimates for New York and other states, so the latest figures are slightly different from those in the Empire Center’s December report on demographic trends.
A significant factor in New York’s slowdown was what the bureau described as a “historic decline” in foreign immigration. Arrivals from other countries dropped to 1.3 million nationwide in the 12 months before July 2025, compared to 2.7 million the year before.
New York saw an inflow of 96,000 immigrant arrivals in 2024-25, down from 207,000 the year before.
Meanwhile, U.S. residents continued moving away from New York faster than they moved in, resulting in a domestic migration loss of 137,000 and an overall migration loss of 42,000. That was narrowly offset by so-called natural growth of 43,000 – 203,000 births minus 160,000 deaths.
