A new U.S. Census report finds New York is losing population at a faster pace than any other state in the nation.

In its U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2021 national and state population estimates and components of change released Tuesday, the population of the country grew in the past year by 392,665, or 0.1%, the lowest rate since the nation’s founding. The slow rate of growth can be attributed to decreased net international migration, decreased fertility, and increased mortality due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Population growth has been slowing for years because of lower birth rates and decreasing net international migration, all while mortality rates are rising due to the aging of the nation’s population,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Population Division at the Census Bureau. “Now, with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, this combination has resulted in a historically slow pace of growth.”

New York, however, had the largest annual and cumulative numeric population decline, decreasing by 319,020 between July 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021.

Upstate United, a non-partisan pro-taxpayer organization, said the decline was greater than the combined population declines of Illinois, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio.

“Addressing the Empire State exodus must be a top priority of our leaders in 2022,” said Justin Wilcox, executive director of Upstate United. “Our outmigration crisis adds to the burden of remaining residents and threatens our ongoing recovery efforts. We need Governor (Kathy) Hochul to tackle this issue and get New York growing in the right direction.”

Earlier this year, Upstate United published a fact sheet about New York’s outmigration trends. Analyzing previously published Census Bureau data, that fact sheet found that more than 1.5 million New Yorkers fled the state between 2010-2020.

“New York’s massive tax burden, sky-high cost of living and anti-business climate have been driving out hardworking taxpayers for years,” said Wilcox. “We need to get our economy moving – not our people.”

Between 2020 and 2021, 33 states saw population increases, primarily through domestic migration, while 17 states and the District of Columbia lost population.

States in the Mountain West saw the biggest year-over-year growth, with Idaho growing by almost 3%, and Utah and Montana each seeing population increases of 1.7%. The District of Columbia lost 2.9% of its population, while Illinois lost 0.9% of its population.

E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for New York Policy said the pandemic provided a boost to the state’s population loss, its largest single-year population loss ever and the worst in percentage terms of any state in the past year. The decline wiped out nearly half of New York’s cumulative population gain of 823,147 people during the previous decade, pulling the statewide total back to below 20 million, McMahon said.

“In absolute terms, whether measured from July 1, 2020, or from the decennial census count as of three months earlier, New York’s net domestic loss in the pandemic era has been exceeded only (slightly) by California’s,” McMahon wrote in a report published Tuesday on the Empire Center’s website. “But relative terms, New York has been far and away the biggest loser, with a net domestic migration outflow equivalent to 1.7 percent of its July 1, 2020, estimated population.

New York’s population decrease as of mid-2021 was due mainly 352,185 more people moving out of the state than moved in during the previous 12 months. McMahon wrote that is the largest out-migration in New York state history, exceeding the state’s former record annual migration losses during the late 1970s.

In addition to people moving out the state in droves, McMahon said net foreign immigration over the past year slowed to 18,860, the smallest number in six decades. The state also had a higher-than-usual death rate due to COVID-19.

The areas where New York lost population won’t be available for a few months, according to McMahon.

“Which areas of New York accounted for most of this loss?” McMahon wrote in a report on the Empire Center’s website. “The answer is almost certainly New York City, but official specifics won’t be available until the Census Bureau’s estimates of population changes for counties and municipalities are released in March.”