New York's population growth slows as deportation, new immigration policies take hold, census shows

A significant reduction in net international migration amid the Trump administration's deportation crackdown contributed to New York having just a minimal population bump between 2024 and 2025, according to recently released U.S. Census Bureau data.

New York’s population stood at roughly 20,002,427 on July 1, 2025, about 1,000 more than the count at around the same date in 2024, according to Vintage 2025 estimates released Tuesday.

But as the Trump administration stepped up deportations and other immigration enforcement efforts, net international migration to the state dipped to roughly 96,000 between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, about 67 percent less than the roughly 291,000 who settled in New York from abroad between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024.

The decline in net international migration to New York mirrored national figures. Net international migration to the United States dropped from 2.7 million to 1.3 million during the same time frame, bureau records show. That reduction has led to a substantial easing of the overall U.S. population growth — to an increase of just 0.5%, the slowest expansion since early in the pandemic.

"With births and deaths remaining relatively stable compared to the prior year, the sharp decline in net international migration is the main reason for the slower growth rate we see today," Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for estimates and projections at the U.S. Census Bureau, said in a statement.

Jan Vink, a senior extension associate at Cornell’s Program on Applied Demographics, noted the estimates cover the last six months of the Biden administration and the first half-year of the Trump administration.

"There are a lot fewer people arriving in the country and in New York due to the changing [immigration] polices," he said.

Overall, population experts say the negligible increase in the state's population is due to people still arriving in New York from overseas, along with state-to-state migration, births and deaths. 

New York remains the nation’s fourth-most populous state, the Census Bureau said. Since the 2020 census, the state has lost 1% of its population, or approximately 201,000 people, according to several years of analysis of census data by Cornell’s Program on Applied Demographics.

And for the last few decades, New York has seen more people leaving the state than coming in — a trend exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when more than 300,000 people left, according to the analysis.

People are still moving away from the state, but not at those pandemic levels. In 2024, the population loss stood at about 119,000, according to recent estimates. The following year, the loss was about 138,000.

The top location that New York residents preferred to go to was New Jersey, which received about 57,000 former New Yorkers, according to statistics based on the 2024 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates released earlier this month. After that, roughly 51,000 former residents moved to Florida, while about 29,000 relocated to Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, nearly 36,000 New Jersey residents decided to call New York home — the most from among other states, the survey showed. Roughly 31,000 former Californians moved to the Empire State, while roughly 28,000 who lived in Florida came here.

Leslie Reynolds, a research support specialist within Cornell’s Program on Applied Demographics, said New Jersey's proximity to New York could make the Garden State appealing for many New Yorkers. As for Florida, she said, the movement between the two states is significant, though the flows are in both directions.

In research on prior migration trends, Reynolds found families leaving New York City tend to be larger, while those arriving tend to be smaller.

"If you have families or larger households leaving the state, if you have single or couple households moving in, then it offsets the number," she said.

Newsday's Arielle Martinez contributed to this story.