Approximately $14 billion worth of income has fled the Big Apple as more than 125,000 New Yorkers moved to Florida in recent years.
About a third of those residents — some 41,251 — flocked to Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward counties in South Florida over a five-year period, the New York Post reported Thursday, citing data from the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan New York-based fiscal watchdog.
New residents to those three counties alone between 2018 and 2022 resulted in an approximately $10 billion reduction in New York City’s adjusted gross income, the Post reported. And that’s not counting the additional $3.8 billion from the more than 85,000 others who relocated to other parts of the Sunshine State.
Those leaving the city are doing so because they are “getting something more beneficial to them” elsewhere, CBC President Andrew Rein told the Post.
“The key is with any place you need the benefits to outweigh the cost,” Rein said. “The question right now for New York is, what do we offer? We have to make sure the benefits of being in New York are worth the cost.”
The report said factors causing the mass migration included the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as general affordability, quality-of-life concerns, and safety. Rein noted the percentage of New Yorkers who said life in the city was “good or excellent” dropped from 50% pre-pandemic to just 30% last year.
“That’s a significant drop,” he said. “We need New Yorkers to want to be here, and right now they’re saying the quality of life is not what they want.”
Many of those departing were high-wage earners, stripping the city of additional economic activity, the report found. The approximately 26,000 people who moved from New York to Miami-Dade County had a per-capita income of more than $266,000, and it was $189,000 for those who moved to Palm Beach County.
The loss of wealthy New Yorkers is significant given the top 1% of city tax filers contributed 40% of the state’s income taxes, according to the CBC.
“One of the critical issues of our time is keeping our competitiveness for businesses and residents,” Rein said. “We need to focus on ensuring we don’t tax too much, that we are a safe place to live, and that people find quality of life to be high.
“We’re in vigorous competition to keep people and make sure they move here.”
The report stated that many of those who left the Big Apple stayed in the Northeast. Long Island increased its population by about 138,000 during that same five-year period, resulting in another $11.1 billion drop in adjusted gross income for the city between Nassau and Suffolk counties.
Nearly 60,000 former city dwellers also moved to Westchester County in that time, depriving the Big Apple of another $5 billion worth of income. Fairfield County in Connecticut saw another 31,000 former New Yorkers become residents, lowering New York City’s income by another $4.9 billion. Bergen County in New Jersey accounted for another $1.8 billion in reduced income for the city, and a population decline of more than 30,000 residents.
Combined, these relocations within the Northeast cost New York City $22.8 billion in income and resulted in a population drop of more than 230,000 residents. CBC data showed New Jersey, Florida, California, and Pennsylvania saw the highest concentrations of new residents after the five-year period when New Yorkers moved out of town.
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