New York City experienced dramatic growth over the last ten years, bringing its current population to a record 8.8 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which released the first detailed statistics from the 2020 Census.
On balance, the city added more than 629,000 residents, from 8.175 million measured in 2010, but city planning officials said that a big part of the story was that far fewer residents left the city than had been projected by census officials. Additionally, an unprecedented effort by city officials and community groups to penetrate every neighborhood and leave no resident uncounted—during a pandemic—appears to have reaped significant dividends.
The new figures gave city officials something to celebrate.
Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted “The Big Apple just got bigger!” and issued a thanks “to every City worker who made this record-breaking count possible.”
“This number will ensure our city gets the federal resources we need to keep moving forward,” he wrote.
Peter Lobo, the city’s chief demographer, said he was “feeling really good” about the census figures
“The city’s growth actually outpaced the growth of the nation,” said Lobo. “That is unusual for a mature city like New York.”
One of the key elements of the surprising outcome, said Lobo, was the identification of over 265,000 addresses that the Census Bureau did not previously have.
“Very conservatively,” said Lobo, “as a result we added half a million people who would’ve otherwise been missed.”
For the first time, New York City funded a census outreach effort, spending $40 million and coordinating with dozens of local community groups who had close ties to populations that often go undercounted. This appears to have overcome the apprehensions of many immigrants and marginalized populations as well as a once-in-a-century pandemic that left millions of residents shut indoors, as well as efforts by the Trump administration to end the census count early and to not include non-citizens in the count.
“We knew that the hardest to reach New Yorkers, undocumented immigrants etcetera would be very hard to reach by the federal government's door knockers, and we're incredibly, incredibly proud to see the results,” said Amit Singh Bagga, who served as the Deputy Director of the city’s census outreach.
Half the city’s growth, said Lobo, came from an increase in the Asian New Yorker population.
While this is momentous, its true import will be measured by redistricting, said Jerry Vattamala, the director of the democracy program at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
“The new lines should reflect the growth so that communities that are growing have an equal chance, an equal say to have political participation,” he said, noting that often redistricting is used to minimize the political representation that should accompany a community’s population growth.
