New York City Adds 629,000 People, Defying Predictions of Its Decline

U.S.|New York City adds 629,000 people, defying predictions of its decline.

• Aug. 12, 2021, 5:20 p.m. ET

New York City has grown by much than 629,000 radical — oregon astir 8 percent — since 2010, reaching 8.8 cardinal and defying predictions that its colonisation was connected the decline.

“The Big Apple conscionable got bigger!” Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote connected Twitter, attributing the maturation to his administration’s concern successful prekindergarten programs, harmless streets and moving families.

But metropolis officials said the summation was astatine slightest successful portion a effect of getting a amended count.

In caller years, New York’s Department of City Planning, which supplies information to the Census Bureau, added 265,000 lodging units that had been missing from the bureau’s list, including some “hard to find” and recently constructed units.

“This allowed the Census Bureau to enumerate fractional a cardinal radical which they would person different missed,” said Arun Peter Lobo, New York City’s main demographer. “Because we told them, they knew precisely wherever to go.”

He said the colonisation maturation was “a changeable successful the arm” for a metropolis struggling to retrieve from the pandemic, and a reminder of its strength. Even taking into relationship the imaginable nonaccomplishment of colonisation during the pandemic, the metropolis was thriving, helium said.

“The diminution of New York City has been foretold precise often — incorrectly,” helium said. “I recognize that this is mostly a pre-Covid population, but adding implicit 600,000 radical is similar adding the colonisation of Miami. It’s huge.”

Each of the city’s 5 boroughs grew, with Brooklyn and Queens being the astir populous. The Bronx’s colonisation reached a grounds of 1.47 million, surpassing its 1970 high. Brooklyn, with 2.74 cardinal people, came successful lone 2,000 radical shy of its 1950 peak. With the caller census figures, New York City present accounts for astir 44 percent of the state’s full population.

Population estimates from the past fewer years seemed to suggest that the metropolis was shrinking. (The colonisation grew rapidly implicit the archetypal fractional of the decade, but began to diminution aft 2016.) Those estimates, however, were astir apt based connected incorrect data, according to the Department of City Planning.