New York City has grown by more than 629,000 people — or nearly 8 percent — since 2010, reaching 8.8 million and defying predictions that its popu

New York City adds 629,000 people, defying predictions of its decline.

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2021-08-17 12:00:04

New York City has grown by more than 629,000 people — or nearly 8 percent — since 2010, reaching 8.8 million and defying predictions that its population was on the decline.

“The Big Apple just got bigger!” Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote on Twitter, attributing the growth to his administration’s investment in prekindergarten programs, safe streets and working families.

In recent years, New York’s Department of City Planning, which supplies data to the Census Bureau, added 265,000 housing units that had been missing from the bureau’s list, including both “hard to find” and newly constructed units.

“This allowed the Census Bureau to enumerate half a million people which they would have otherwise missed,” said Arun Peter Lobo, New York City’s chief demographer. “Because we told them, they knew exactly where to go.”

He said the population growth was “a shot in the arm” for a city struggling to recover from the pandemic, and a reminder of its strength. Even taking into account the possible loss of population during the pandemic, the city was thriving, he said.