Americans Are Returning to Cities after Remote-Work Exodus, Data Shows

The Washington Post

16:01 JST, March 31, 2023

The exodus of people fleeing large urban areas during the height of the pandemic appears to be reversing, according to data from the Census Bureau released Thursday.

Many workers who could telecommute abandoned crowded cities and counties for suburban or rural areas when covid struck, causing demographers and businesses to wonder whether the movement signified a permanent shift. But the overall patterns of population change are moving toward pre-pandemic rates, the bureau’s Vintage 2022 estimates of population and components of change show.

Eleven of the 15 largest metro areas gained residents or lost fewer people compared with the previous year, including the Washington, D.C., metro area, New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle, according to an analysis by Brookings Institution senior demographer William Frey.

The Washington, D.C., metro area gained 8,849 people, after losing 1,772 the year before. The region had been growing by tens of thousands each year before the pandemic, though the rate had slowed in recent years. Washington, D.C., and its neighboring Virginia’s Arlington County and the city of Alexandria all gained population last year, after shrinking the year before. Arlington gained 426 people after losing 5,225, Alexandria gained 322 after losing 3,922, and the District gained 3,012 after losing 2,077, Frey’s analysis showed.

Among the most striking shifts were in Manhattan and San Francisco, both of which lost population at a significant rate between 2020 and 2021. Manhattan, which shrank by 5.87 percent in 2021, grew by 1.11 percent last year. San Francisco lost 6.79 percent of its population in 2021 but shrank by only a third of a percentage point last year.

Both are home to a large number of people who were able to work remotely during the pandemic. Covid rates in New York City were especially high early in the pandemic, and many Manhattan residents moved to outlying counties.

“Everyone was talking about leaving New York, and especially Manhattan,” Frey said. “A lot of people made instantaneous moves.”

Manhattan lost 20,337 people between 2019 and 2020, a period that includes the first four months of the pandemic, lost 98,505 between 2020 and 2021 and then gained 17,472 the following year. After such a huge drop, the new numbers represent “a very quick reversal,” Frey said.

Population shifts just outside New York City showed the inverse, with Suffolk County losing 7,653 last year, after gaining 11,168 the year before. Nassau and Westchester saw steep losses compared with the previous year, as well.

Miami-Dade, Dallas County, Seattle’s King County, Atlanta’s Fulton County and Denver flipped from population decline in 2020-2021 to gains in 2021-2022, according to Frey’s analysis.

For many counties and large metro areas, increased immigration has a lot to do with the growth, Frey said. The inflow of immigrant populations to urban cores and suburbs rebounded last year to levels not seen since the Obama administration.

Areas with college populations also bounced back last year, after bottoming out during the pandemic.

“Many counties with large universities saw their populations fully rebound this year as students returned,” said Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for estimates and projections in the Census Bureau’s population division.

For example, Whitman County, Wash., home to Washington State University, shrank by 9.6 percent between 2020 and 2021 but then grew back by 10.1 percent last year – the most of any county with over 20,000 people.

The 10 fastest-growing counties were in the South and West, mirroring pre-pandemic trends.