Nearly $14 BILLON in income disappears from NYC as folks flee to Florida: report

So many New York City residents have fled the state in recent years that it’s now poised to have lost nearly $14 billion in income.

An estimated 102,000 NYC residents fled to Florida between 2018 and 2022, according to a study from the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC).

In leaving the state, they’ve taken with them $13.7 billion in personal income, the study further notes.

New York City lost 102K residents and their $13.7B in personal income to Florida from 2018-2022 on net.

Check out CBC’s Competitive NYC: Value Proposition Tracker: https://t.co/40m6ls5dKv pic.twitter.com/xE8nSOnVi3

— Citizens Budget Commission (@cbcny) May 1, 2025

Around a third of the departing New Yorkers have settled in Miami-Dade County, Palm Beach County, or Broward County.

“Escapes to those three counties alone between 2018 and 2022 resulted in an approximately $10 billion reduction in New York City’s adjusted gross income,” the New York Post notes, citing data from the study.

Speaking with the Post, CBC president Andrew Rein said folks are leaving the city because they’re “getting something more beneficial to them” elsewhere.

“The key is with any place you need the benefits to outweigh the cost,” he continued. “The question right now for New York is what do we offer? We have to make sure the benefits of being in New York are worth the cost.”

Rein further noted that the percentage of New Yorkers who said life in NYC was “good or excellent” dropped to just 30 percent last year, down from a pre-pandemic high of 50 percent.

“That’s a significant drop. We need New Yorkers to want to be here, and right now they’re saying the quality of life is not what they want,” he said.

Why might that be?

Hint: Democrat policies!

Furious New Yorkers torch AOC for ‘neighborhood nightmare’ that looks like ‘brothel-filled-red-light district’ https://t.co/wkQDHAlj6t via @BIZPACReview

— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) September 27, 2024

It doesn’t help that many of the people who departed New York made lots of money that helped prop up the city’s economy.

“The approximately 26,000 people who moved from New York to Miami-Dade county had a per-capita income of over $266,000 – while those who moved to Palm Beach County earned a sturdy $189,000,” according to the Post.

Considering that the top one percent of tax payers in NYC contribute 40 percent of the state’s income taxes, this is a big deal.

“One of the critical issues of our time is keeping our competitiveness for businesses and residents,” Rein noted. “We need to focus on ensuring we don’t tax too much, that we are a safe place to live, and that people find quality of life to be high. We’re in vigorous competition to keep people and make sure they move here.”

But not everybody who left NYC necessarily left the state. Another 138,000 former NYC residents fled to Long Island, costing the Big Apple another $11.1 billion in income.

But there’s more.

“Nearly 60,000 ex-city dwellers also moved to Westchester County in that time, depriving the Big Apple of another $5 billion worth of income,” according to the Post. “Fairfield County, Connecticut saw another 31,000 ex-New Yorkers take up residence, lowering New York City’s income by another $4.9 billion.”

“Tony Bergen County, New Jersey accounted for another $1.8 billion in reduced income for NYC, and a population decline of over 30,000 residents,” the Post’s analysis continued.

Combined, the city lost 230,000 residents at a cost of $22.8 billion in income.

These findings come over a year after legal experts warned that the New York left’s lawfare against now-President Donald Trump — specifically, Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling against his business empire — would cause businesses to run for the hills.

Experts warn Trump penalties could cause NY businesses to run for the hills: ‘Legal banana republic’ https://t.co/asvxKR7iom via @BIZPACReview

— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) February 17, 2024

Speaking with Fox News after the ruling was announced, former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer speculated that the exodus was about to begin with Trump’s own children.

“If you’re Eric [or] Donald Junior, what are you going to do? [Y]ou just say goodbye to New York,” he said.

“Which fits a pattern that many successful people have been doing and leaving New York because New York is just too political, too blue and too punitive – you’re seeing that in the business community and among upper-income New Yorkers already,” he added.

Fleischer further argued that New York’s justice system has become a dangerous quasi-political entity, with solely leftists being placed in all the positions of power.

“He noted that New York County, which is Engoron’s purview and contains Manhattan Island and Marble Hill, has voted on average 85 percent to 15 percent Democratic in presidential elections going back to his former boss Bush’s first race in 2000,” according to Fox News.

“New York State hasn’t awarded its electoral votes to a Republican since Ronald Reagan, and only sided substantively with a losing GOP candidate once: when Thruway namesake Gov. Thomas Dewey lost to President Harry Truman in 1948,” Fox News notes.

“There’s very little pressure pushing back on these politicians here (in New York) to stop doing it because it’s wrong,” Fleischer said. “So unless the appeals process in New York comes to the rescue, it’s become a legal banana republic.”

Senior Staff Writer
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V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.

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