Generational shift: Hudson County population dropped 20,000 in first year of pandemic – NJ.com

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, Samantha Maisano Kelly’s need to move her family out of their tight apartment in a Hoboken brownstone became more urgent.

“We were just casually looking, and then the pandemic kind of sped it up,” Kelly said. “We were outgrowing our apartment.

“We had to start thinking about ‘What do we want overall for our family?’”

Kelly is just one of over 20,000 Hudson residents who left the county during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hudson County saw the largest population loss statewide from April 2020 to July 2021 — more than 3% of county residents.

Essex County saw the second-largest population change, with about 7,000 residents leaving.

James W. Hughes, a professor at Rutgers University’s Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, said Hudson County is going through a generational shift. He said many people leaving the county are older millennials in their 30s that are starting to raise families.

“They would have moved out anyway over the current decade. But COVID-19 was sort of an accelerant on the fire — it speeded things up dramatically,” Hughes said.

“Hudson County became the hot place for millennials over the past 20 years, so it probably had more to lose when millennials shifted their housing patterns,” he explained. “By 2020, they were 39 years of age. Some of them had moved to the suburbs simply because it was an easier place to raise kids.”

In addition, Hughes says a lot of millennials in their 20s who’d moved into Hudson from the suburbs “retreated back to their parents’ houses or to more spatial, cheaper, affordable spaces.”

Kelly had lived in Hoboken for more than 10 years and her husband, Robert, for more than 20 years before they decided to head to Rutherford in January 2021 to raise their 5-year-old daughter.

“We absolutely love Hoboken,” Kelly said. “We just could not find a space in the amount of time we needed to fit all of our needs.”

Hudson County saw 26,012 residents migrate elsewhere within the U.S., the Census Bureau reported, while gaining almost 2,300 residents from outside the country. There were 9,337 births and 5,412 deaths.

Overall, Hudson County’s population dropped from 724,854 residents in the April 2020 census to 702,463 on July 1 last year.

Sawyer Smith, the founder of the real estate company Sawyer Smith Residential in Jersey City and Hoboken, witnessed many Hudson families moving elsewhere in New Jersey during the pandemic — including his own.

After living in Jersey City for more than 20 years, Smith and his husband moved to Hunterdon County during the pandemic to raise their child.

“We decided that it would be better at this point of our lives to live in a quieter, more rural area,” Smith said. “It is like a natural process for a lot of people with kids.”

Smith said that in Tewksbury Township, where he now lives, he knows five families who moved from Jersey City.

Hughes and Smith believe this large shift isn’t a trend and will shift back the other way over time. Smith thinks the county will not only make up the difference but eventually increase in population. Smith said some people who left may eventually decide to move back, perhaps even before their kids leave the nest.

Hughes said rising mortgage rates and single-family home prices could slow down the outflow of millennials. Eventually, Generation Z, the so-called “Zoomers” who’ve started moving to Hudson in their 20s, will replace the millennials who’ve left. He said real estate reports show a lot of young people filling up developments, particularly in Jersey City.

“That is going to counterbalance the loss of millennials,” he said. “But it is a generational transition, and sometimes there are some rough spots in the transition.”