New York lost more residents – and at the largest rate – in 2023 than any other state, despite an overall rise in the U.S. population, according to U.S. Census data.

The bureau released a map showing the percentage change in state populations between July 2022 and July 2023 – New York stands out as the only state colored a deep orange, a label for a percentage change of -0.5 or more.

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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      10 months ago

      In order to live next to all the city stuff? Some people like cities after all, and more space is more space to clean

      • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I am so country that the only time I ever visited a city I got vertigo and couldn’t look in any direction but down.

        It wasn’t even a huge city. It was Charlotte NC.

        When I was a kid I dreamed of going to a city and playing music and being a part of the culture.

        The girls got to me though and I have instead repopulated a rural area. :p

        I have 7 kids, 2 adopted, 5 biological.

        My guitar is used almost exclusively to play Yellow Submarine and sing the family’s names in place of yellow. “We all live in little Abby’s submarine, in mommy’s submarine, in daddy’s submarine.”

        My youngest thinks Beatlemania is still a thing. First thing every morning. “Daddy, I want my Beatles.” Sister comes in swinging demanding Pinkfong.

    • Klystron@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      The literal endless abundance of things to do. Idc if my place is a closet if I’m never in it. Obviously if you’re raising a 5 person family it’s harder, but if you’re solo or DINK then why wouldn’t you

      • hydrospanner@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Solo converting to DINK here, and for me, after spending years in a city, basically while there’s tons to do in a city, there’s only a relatively small portion of it that I actually want to do.

        Combine that with my love of outdoor hobbies which are all farther from me while living in a city…

        And at this point, for me, it’s more about finding the smallest city that offers me most of what I like about cities while being small enough that I lose as much of the negatives as possible, with bonus points for a city that’s small enough for me to live on the edges, where I can have a house with a yard and a garage, while being within a 10 minute drive of city center, but also less than 30 minutes from outdoor recreation opportunities.

        I’m also at the age where “stay home” is often my preferred choice of thing to do, so having a spacious, comfortable home where I can enjoy living is a major consideration. A 500 sqft 1BR that I share with a roommate or two ain’t cutting it.

        Different people like different things, and while cities provide a lot, there’s also a lot they don’t.

      • laverabe@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        pollution, noise, lack of nature, and depending on the city crime and corruption

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          There’s no corruption quite like deep country corruption. Oh, you’re dating the sheriff’s daughter? Well we’ll just look the other way…

          • laverabe@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            even withstanding, the other issues are still present. I’m not saying cities are hellscapes, but they are lacking a few advantages that rural areas have. I like touching my own plot of dirt on this pale blue dot. My own piece of Earth. There is nothing like the nutrient overload from the first of the seasons garden fresh backyard tomato grown from last years compost. Or building random projects; or just lying on the ground looking at the stars anytime I want. In my book no amount of money would be worth sacrificing all that to live in a dense city for me personally. But this is just my outlook, I understand many other people value things differently.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              10 months ago

              Oh don’t get me wrong, I live in rural Iowa and i love being able to go so deep into the woods there isn’t another person for miles. Lots of land to bike on and plenty of cool places to camp and chill outdoors.

              I’m just saying, corruption can happen anywhere.

  • danc4498@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Blue states going down, red states going up. The electoral college will fuck us all.

    • RainfallSonata@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Outside of NYC, NY is a red state. But will 100,000 have that great an influence on the electoral college? It doesn’t sound like a lot in a population of 19 million.

      • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        There are pockets of NY, outside of NYC, that are blue. The big areas that are red are mostly rural counties. But land doesn’t vote, people do, so it doesn’t matter if 1,000 people in a huge area vote red when 100,000 people in a small city vote blue.

        You’re right that NYC helps keep us blue, but they aren’t the only ones. In 2020, NY voted for Biden over Trump 60.8% to 37.7%. If we removed NYC’s counties, NY would have still voted for Biden, but at a much closer 52.4% to 45.9%.

      • Ullallulloo@civilloquy.com
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        10 months ago

        Not alone. It would have to lose ~3% relative to other states to lose a vote. However, this is just one year and southern states are all gaining people at twice the rate New York is losing them, so theoretically a blue vote could be flipping to a red vote every few years just from the amount of people leaving blue states.

        Note that when New York loses Congressional seats, the legislature will presumably gerrymander them such that the Republicans in New York are eliminated, so it shouldn’t affect Congress at all.

        • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          watches the flood of blue tech people swarming to NC

          yeah, I’m not sure the vote will flip that way. It doesn’t take much to impact these tiny population red states.

    • SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      It depends on who is moving. It doesn’t help Dems to run up the score in California and New York, so having people leave might actually help. If some of those educated progressive knowledge workers move to cities in the south, it could make a huge difference.

    • trebuchet@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      Unless blue people moving to Texas and Florida flip those states blue, in which case red might be done for good.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Unless it causes red states to flip blue. GA and AZ are examples of that happening.

      • danc4498@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I hope so, but my experience in Tennessee is that only the conservatives are leaving California and moving here.

        • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          Yeah, Tennessee is beyond repair. But other states are close enough to flip.

  • Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com
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    10 months ago

    If the people equivalent to the entire population of Wyoming moved out of New York, most people wouldn’t notice.

  • errer@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Moving to states that have banned abortion, smart move dumbasses.

    • KRAW@linux.community
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      10 months ago

      Believe it or not, people might not always have abortion at the top of their list when they’re moving. In fact I’m willing to bet cost of living is near the top of their list.

      • rawrthundercats@lemmy.ml
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        Spot on. Migration is a major factor in affecting political change anyway.

        Some of these comments are so out of touch. The irony is that people who blanket support pro choice will go extinct as they abort more of their children over time or don’t reproduce at all (the people above you in this chain). Conservative people don’t abort (now by law) - their population will grow. Thus more anti-abortion laws will happen.

        • KRAW@linux.community
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          10 months ago

          According to previous studies on who gets abortions, a lot of people getting abortions are people who have already had children, so your latter point doesn’t really check out.

        • falcunculus@jlai.lu
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          People who are pro choice might still choose to have children.

          People don’t necessarily inherit the political opinions of their parents, and can change their outlook over time.

          People can spread their ideas through other methods than reproduction, such as debate, educating other people’s children, or sharing their opinion on Lemmy.

    • tills13@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      It’s people moving from places where they actually want to live (because of qol) to places where they can afford to live. Though it’d be interesting to see like a “true” cost of living for these places.

    • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world
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      Yeah I don’t get that at all. I had several female co-workers who accepted relocation packages to Texas when my company offered them right when Texas started passing anti-abortion laws.

      I figured it was none of my business to ask why they did but man…they are either really smart and wanting to flip the state blue or they aren’t thinking it’s going to affect them.

      No amount of money would make me want to move to Texas or Florida, or anywhere the Alt-right has a strong political hold

      • highenergyphysics@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        They don’t think it will happen to them.

        Yknow despite literally all metrics of quality of life, health, and safety being even worse in red states than the already pathetic US average.

        Why is it that every conservative leaning government worldwide is currently in a self destructive spiral while socialist societies are getting better and better in all measurable metrics?

        Curious.

        • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldM
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          10 months ago

          Like Venezuela? Bangladesh? Republic of the Congo? Seems like maybe too broad a statement to me. Some Socialist countries have seen improvements for some people - that doesn’t make is a magical indicator for societal well-being.

    • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      They’re moving to states that have the same views as them. Good for them.

    • rawrthundercats@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      How do you think political change happens in the first place? Not to mention how bad must life be in NY, a way more progressive state to want to move somewhere like Texas.

  • hex_m_hell@slrpnk.net
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    10 months ago

    I’m curious how many people are just leaving the US entirely. Technically this probably wouldn’t represent it since expats are still counted as a resident of whatever state you lived in last untill you revoke your citizenship.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I was wondering what would happen to gentrified neighborhoods once they ratched up the cost of living so high that the gentrifiers couldn’t afford it.

  • RainfallSonata@lemmy.world
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    The social services and community involvement are better in Indiana than they were (and appear to still be, though I no longer have direct experience there) in WNY. Health insurance was better in NY, though. If I go back to die there, it will only be for the sake of nostalgia and not any belief that the remainder of my life would be better.

    • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      Depends heavily where you are. If it’s not Indy, ft Wayne, Lafayette, Bloomington, or Terre Haute (maybe Evansville?), IN is pretty craptastic in both those regards. At least that has been my 35 years of experience.

      Little towns got shitty roads and hospitals I wouldn’t enter unless I were actively dying. Not to mention the abhorrent under funding of police / fire / education that is rampant… But all my kids family lives here so I’m here too lol.

  • Verdant Banana@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    moving to places in the south because initially was cheaper and driving up prices such as property taxes for the ones already there

  • boaratio@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I moved from Maryland to Western New York in 2023. Apparently me and my family weren’t enough to move the needle.

  • 5in1k@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Watch Rossman Repair’s ordeal trying to rent a shop in NYC ultimately leaving the state.

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Huh. We’ve been considering moving to upstate NY from central CA, promarily due to ecological factors like climate, air quality, and what seems like the threat of eternal drought. I like central California well enough, but I’m dead sick of 117 degree Augusts and casually living with air quality that makes your eyes water.

    Anyone got some insight on why NY lost so much population?

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    10 months ago

    That population loss, driven by the pandemic, effectively wiped out nearly three-quarters of the population gains made during the prior decade.

    Pandemic hit the city hard and people do not want to go back for overpriced closets.