A new report reveals that New York and New Jersey have suffered staggering financial losses as hundreds of thousands of residents packed up and left over the past decade — taking billions of dollars in income with them.
According to FOX Business, an analysis released Tuesday by Unleash Prosperity, New York lost $517.5 billion in resident income from 2013 to 2022, while neighboring New Jersey shed another $170.1 billion, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service. Together, the two states lost nearly $700 billion in taxable income and spending power.
“New York and New Jersey combined have lost two-thirds of a trillion dollars in net income and purchasing power over the last decade due to moving vans departing these states,” said Steve Moore, economist and co-founder of Unleash Prosperity. “This has been one of the greatest wealth losses for one region in American history. New Jersey and New York are being bled to death by low-tax states in the South.”
The report tracks cumulative gains and losses, meaning when residents move, their incomes are counted as lost for each subsequent year they live elsewhere — not just in the year they move. The data shows that New York had the largest income loss of any state in the country, while New Jersey ranked fourth.
Other major population losers included California, which lost $370.1 billion, and Illinois, which lost $315.2 billion during the same period.
Meanwhile, states with lower taxes and more business-friendly climates saw explosive gains. Florida topped the list with a gain of over $1 trillion in resident income between 2013 and 2022, while Texas added $290 billion.
Unleash Prosperity’s Vote With Your Feet project, which analyzes IRS migration data, found that New York lost a net 1.757 million residents through domestic migration during that decade — more than any other state. California followed with 1.632 million, Illinois with 881,012, and New Jersey with 350,111.
The biggest winners in that same period were Florida, which gained 1.591 million residents, and Texas, with 1.268 million. North Carolina came in third, adding more than 520,000 new residents.
The findings underscore a continuing shift in population and wealth from high-tax, high-cost states in the Northeast and West Coast to lower-tax states across the South and Sun Belt — a migration trend economists say shows no sign of slowing.
