The Empire Center for Public Policy today released its second report on New York’s out-migration, finding that the number of people who have left the state has slowed as the recession took hold—with the biggest change in the decline of New Yorkers moving to Florida.

While 60 percent of New Yorkers who moved between 2000 and 2009 moved to warmer states—with Florida leading the pack—the pace has slowed significantly. Overall, 1.2 million people left to other states between 2001 and 2009, but the number slowed from a high of 179,916 residents in 2005 leaving to 70,569 residents in 2009, a drop of 61 percent.

From 2000 through 2007, 1 million left for other states, according to the center’s first report in 2009. They based the figures on IRS data.

The conservative, Albany-based think tank found that migration tumbled when real estate values tanked after 2007, and the number of people moving to the Sunshine State fell off by more than half between 2005 and 2009, falling from 85,619 to 41,371. In fact, the number of Floridians moving to New York increased by 45 percent from 2005 through 2009: from 23,019 to 33,345.

So in 2009, only 8,026 more New Yorkers moved to Florida than Florida residents moved to New York. And in 2009, for the first time, New York lost more residents to North Carolina than to Florida, said E.J. McMahon, the center’s senior fellow….

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