The Newest New Yorkers

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Last month, the Department of City Planning released its latest edition of the newest New Yorkers. That's a comprehensive look at New York City's immigrant population. The report only comes out about once every decade or so.
And it offers a snapshot of where the city's immigrants are coming from, where they're settling, how they're contributing to the city's economy, and how those patterns have changed over time. And the city has changed a lot since the last report, a little bit more than a decade ago. And while the size of the city's immigrant population has remained remarkably steady, about 3.1 million people, or more than one-third of all New Yorkers, the makeup of that population and where people are living has shifted in significant ways. One major finding, China has now surpassed the Dominican Republic as the city's largest country of origin among foreign-born New Yorkers. Dominicans have been the largest group for decades. Now it's apparently people from China. So we'll dig into that and some of the other major demographic shifts. Sideya Sherman is the Director of the New York City Department of City Planning and Chair of the City Planning Commission. We're going to talk about this report with her.
Sideya, welcome to WNYC. Thank you so much for joining us.

**Sideya Sherman** (1:31)
Good morning. Thank you so much for having me.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:33)
You want to start with a little bit about the history of this report. Why does the city produce it and what does it help us understand that we might not know otherwise?

**Sideya Sherman** (1:43)
Sure. Absolutely. The newest New Yorkers report is a report that city planning releases around every decade.
It really is the most comprehensive portrait of our city's foreign-born population. It's critical for the work that we do in city government, that we understand who New Yorkers are, where they live, what they need. This report is really essential to how we carry out our work. As you shared, our immigrant population in New York City is pretty steady at about 3.1 million. But we certainly are seeing that there are lots of shifts in where people are living as well as shifts in our sizable immigrant populations. About one in three New Yorkers is foreign-born.
More than half of our city's population speaks a language other than English, and immigrants are essential to our economy, 43 percent of our workforce. So very, very essential to our local economy. But to speak to some of the shifts that we're seeing, as you noted, we are certainly seeing that Chinese-born New Yorkers have now surpassed those from the Dominican Republic. It's still very close, but a significant shift in our immigrant population. We're also seeing growth in new neighborhoods, Staten Island, really all across the borough. We're seeing a significant growth in immigrant populations. We're seeing that in Southeast Queens, Southern Brooklyn, as well as Eastern Bronx. So this report, which is also available online and searchable as well, is really essential to how we understand our city's population and how we make sure that we serve New Yorkers.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:11)
Right. So let's unpack some of that because you put a lot of detail from the report in there.
I want to step back on some of those because they're so interesting. First, on kind of the biggest, you know, the biggest number here, the, sorry, the, forgive me, I was going to go to one thing, I'm not, I'm going to go to something else, forgive me for changing horses in mid-sentence, folks. About the many immigrants who are here, three million or so immigrants, just like 12 years ago, the last time this survey was taken. So how many of those would be people who newly arrived in the last 10 years?

**Sideya Sherman** (4:03)
Great question. So there's a constant ebb and flow of immigration in our city.
As you noted, the number has remained pretty steady, but that represents around a million people that are new to our city, that have arrived between 2010 and 2023, and around slightly less than a million who have either left our city or have had population decline due to normal factors such as death, for instance. So this is pretty consistent with the overall patterns that we've seen in immigration throughout our history. There's a constant churn within New York City's immigrant population, but we're seeing that it's holding steady.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:38)
Right. So 3 million immigrants. Does that count only foreign-born people or them plus their children, even if the children were born here?

**Sideya Sherman** (4:47)
So this is really a count of our foreign-born population. And that's important to note, right? Because there are many folks who are second, third generation in New York City at this point. And so as you see these shifts, this also represents who are recent arrivals to New York, who are folks that are foreign-born, who may have lived in New York for decades. But it does not necessarily account the second generation that they've created here.