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- Millions flee New York City in 2020, creating multi-billion-dollar revenue black hole
Millions flee New York City in 2020, creating multi-billion-dollar revenue black hole
A net 70,000 people left the metropolitan region in 2020, resulting in roughly $34 billion in lost income
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread in most parts of the United States, it seems clear that the country's largest city, New York, home to approximately 8.6 million people, is going through monumental changes.
According to a Reuters report citing statistics from location analytics company Unacast, millions of people - many with at least six-figure incomes - moved out of New York City during the pandemic, to be replaced by millions of lower income replacements.
"All told, a net 70,000 people left the metropolitan region this year, resulting in roughly $34 billion in lost income," Reuters reported.
About 3.57 million people left New York City this year between January 1 and December 7, according to Unacast, which analyzed anonymized cell phone location data. Some 3.5 million people earning lower average incomes moved into the city during that same period, the report showed.
Thomas Walle, chief executive and co-founder of Unacast downplayed the scale of the population transfer, suggesting that perhaps "the greater impact is how the population is changing and how the demographics are changing," rather than the bald statistics of the apparent exodus.
The analysis noted that the dual hit to population and income could have lasting consequences for the city as it attempts to recover from the response to the pandemic.
However, while Unacast identified the pandemic-related causes and effect it did not seem to cover how political decisions could have affected the drain away from NYC.
In the initial stages of the outbreak, New York was particularly badly hit as the state's Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City's Mayor Bill de Blasio struggled with massively high infection rates.
Both de Blasio and Cuomo's draconian strictures have come in for criticism. They have outlawed indoor dining and there are tens of thousands of restaurateurs who do not know if they will be able to return to a pre-COVID existence.
In addition, crime - and particularly gun crime has skyrocketed - with reports that the city has released nearly 90 percent of the people it arrested for the offense, according to data that the New York Post reviewed.
Nationwide calls from Black Lives Matter protesters and their media and political enablers to defund the police, resulted in NYC passing a police buget that saw millions of dollars in cuts.