N.Y. closes migration gap with southwestern Connecticut
Fairfield County continues to win the battle with New York as a destination to live, but on dwindling numbers, according to fresh estimates by the federal government, with Connecticut’s southwesternmost county continuing to lose ground to the New Haven and Hartford areas.
On a net basis, nearly 900 households relocated to Fairfield County in 2016 from Bronx County, N.Y., according to updated U.S. Census Bureau calculations, along with another 860 moves to Fairfield County from its economic rival Westchester County, N.Y.
Including other New York City-area communities including on Long Island and extending north along the Hudson River, Fairfield County picked up more than 3,800 households on a net basis, with the figure subject to margins of error that could make the actual totals higher or lower. Another 1,500 New Jersey households relocated to Fairfield County, the Census Bureau estimates.
Even as New Yorkers arrived by the thousands in
2016, however, larger numbers of Fairfield County residents were decamping for lower-cost cities and towns, the Census Bureau determined. More than
1,100 families landed in New Haven County, with another
2,500-plus headed to Hartford County and Tolland County just east.
Add it up, and more than
7,900 residents moved away from Fairfield County in
2016, if the Census Bureau estimates are accurate, reversing a 5,200 gain the year before.
Gov.-elect Ned Lamont has pledged to reinvigorate Connecticut’s image as a destination to live and work, with Lamont having convened a panel of economic advisers in advance of Jan. 9 when he takes office and begins installing heads of varying departments, including former Bridgewater Associates executive and Fairfield resident Ryan Drajewicz as chief of staff in the governor’s office.
“This will be a new office of the governor with a new energy, entrepreneurial spirit and creativity,” Drajewicz said last week at a Hartford press conference. “This is a new chapter for Connecticut and we are going to do things differently.”
The Census Bureau figures do not include net migration totals for foreign countries, with nearly 8,900 new arrivals from overseas, but the Census Bureau not offering estimates on how many people moved abroad from Fairfield County.
Of communities outside the orbit of New York City, Fairfax County, Va., gave up the most ground to Fairfield County, at more than 200 factoring in departures and arrivals. Massachusetts’ Suffolk County and Middlesex County pulled 900 households out of Connecticut in 2016, coinciding with General Electric moving
200 executives to a new headquarters in Boston from its longtime home in Fairfield.
Florida drew more than
1,500 Fairfield County residents in 2016, the Census Bureau found, about even from the year before.