Russell Weaver is an economic geographer and director of research at the Cornell ILR Buffalo Co-Lab.

Weaver says:

“The New York area has lost a significant population, almost entirely to internal emigration. Almost all of the population loss in the New York area was concentrated in the New York-Jersey City-White Plains metro.

“The Buffalo area, on the other hand, lost only a few thousand people – but almost none of these net losses were due to emigration. Rather, it was a natural change in population ( deaths exceeding births.) The pandemic no doubt had something to do with this latest result. Buffalo-Niagara recorded a net loss of 3,170 residents; and there have been around 3,800 deaths from COVID-19 in the region since March 2020

“Areas that saw significant immigration included Albany-Schenectady, Kingston and Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown.

“Metro Nassau County-Suffolk County population barely changed (net loss of 826).

“The population losses in the Rochester and Syracuse areas were more pronounced than the losses in the Buffalo area, because Rochester and Syracuse experienced relatively high emigration (compared to Buffalo), in addition to the natural loss of population (which is mainly what affected Buffalo).

Jan Vink represents New York State on the United States Census Bureau‘s Federal-State Cooperatives for Population Estimates and Projections and leads PAD’s role as the coordinating agency for the data center of the New York State. He can talk about the effect the pandemic has had on the populations of the county, both from a positive and negative aspect.