New data suggests that the pandemic-spurred flight from big coastal metros is reversing as employers push workers to return to the office.
Several major US cities that saw increased out-migration during the pandemic are starting to see the trend reverse, according to a new report from Markerr, a real estate insights company that uses United States Postal Service change-of-address data, census information, and its own data-science methods to estimate population change.
New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., all continued to see more people leave than move to their metro areas in the first half of 2022. But the flight is less dramatic than before. As of July, all those cities lost fewer people this year than they did through July of 2021, 2020 or even 2019 — before pandemic disruptions began.
Bloomberg CityLab
By Sarah Holder
September 3, 2022