Census: Biggest cities lost more than 1M day residents as commuters stayed home during pandemic

The daytime populations of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago plunged to ghost town levels as more commuters worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Census Bureau reported Wednesday.

The Census Bureau reported that it analyzed the commuter-adjusted population of the nation’s largest cities from 2019 and 2021 “to highlight how the dramatic increase in home-based work during the COVID-19 pandemic changed the population distribution of certain key metros during a typical workday.”

The bureau found more than 1 million people missing from the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago metro areas during 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. business hours in 2021 compared with 2019, the last year before the pandemic.

“This estimate includes residents of an area who do not work and workers who work in an area regardless of whether they live there, and excludes workers who live but do not work in an area,” statisticians Michael Burrows and Charlynn Burd wrote in a summary of the figures.

The census figures did not include tourists, students and other transient visitors to the cities.

At more than 8 million people, New York is the largest city in the country, followed by Los Angeles with more than 3 million residents and Chicago with more than 2 million.

According to the census report, the commuter-adjusted population of New York County — which is synonymous with Manhattan, the business district — dropped by about 800,000 people from 2019 to 2021. By contrast, the county’s total resident population fell by only 50,000 over the same period.

Noting that more people worked from home in adjoining counties in 2021, Mr. Burrows and Ms. Burd said that suggests “many people who worked in Manhattan in 2019 did not live there and no longer routinely commuted there two years later.”

In the Los Angeles area, both the resident and commuter-adjusted populations of Los Angeles County fell by about 200,000 between 2019 and 2021.

In Orange County, the other county in the L.A. metro area, the resident population fell by roughly 8,000 and the commuter-adjusted population dropped by around 50,000.

Illinois’ Cook County, the home of Chicago, saw a drop of about 60,000 commuter-adjusted residents despite an overall gain of about 23,000 residents between 2019 and 2021.

The two largest cities in Texas came next on the census list of most dramatic declines in daytime residents.

Dallas County’s commuter-adjusted population declined by around 140,000, even as its resident population fell by about 49,000 people. The commuter-adjusted population of Harris County, home to Houston, fell by roughly 52,000 people while its resident population increased by around 15,000.

The report did not say whether the trend has continued since 2021, the last year for which figures are available.

“The [Census Bureau] will continue to collect information about ways communities are changing in the face of new commuting trends,” Mr. Burrows and Ms. Burd wrote.