How Many People Moved from NYC to Syracuse in the Pandemic?

Maybe you’ve met some recent transplants from Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens in your neighborhoods, schools and coffee shops.

There has been anecdotal evidence of their migration from the New York City area to the Syracuse area during the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, U.S. Postal Service records show the extent of it.

In 2020, there was nearly a 70% bump in the number of New York City area residents who changed their addresses to the Syracuse metropolitan area, which includes Onondaga, Oswego and Madison counties, according to an analysis by the national commercial real estate firm CBRE.

There was also an 18% drop in the number of people who moved the other direction.

....

The news is exciting to the staff at CenterState CEO. They have been marketing the region for decades. The numbers fit anecdotal evidence they glean from the back end of their recruiting website. During the pandemic, New York City residents, mostly in the 24 to 44 age group, were searching for job openings as well as real estate listings and “reasons to move to CNY,” said Ben Sio, chief of staff for CenterState.

Other hits came from Philadelphia, Boston, Washington and Detroit, he said.

“There’s a demand for the product we’re selling,” he said.

USPS change of address forms are the quickest way for researchers to look at migration, but those records are not perfect science. The firm limited its analysis to people who changed their addresses for more than six months to eliminate snow birds and college students. But the number of people coming and going from Florida shows plenty of winter residents were likely still counted in the data.

Better migration records will eventually be released by the U.S. Census Bureau and the IRS.

“The question for us is if we can maintain that movement nationally into smaller and mid-size areas and be able to make decisions based on quality of life and commuter times and not just make a decision on total pay and all that,” Sio said.

Read the full article from syracuse.com, here.