NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – From 2020 to 2021, thousands of New Mexicans picked up their lives and moved. Now, a new analysis of tax data shows the incomes they took with them.
U.S. Census Bureau data has already shown that some New Mexico counties lost residents during the pandemic. Bernalillo County, for example, lost over 2,000 people between 2020 and 2021. Tax data analyzed by the Economic Innovation Group shows that they took $87,329,000 worth of adjusted gross income with them.
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A nationwide map by EIG shows how the pandemic changed the income tax base. Courtesy EIG.
The bipartisan public policy organization saw a common trend in New Mexico and across the nation: Internal Revenue Service data shows high earners fled from urban areas during the pandemic. The group called this an "exodus of taxable income."
In Bernalillo County, the average income of those who left was $60,700 per year. The analysis shows that the average income of those who came to the county during the pandemic was $1,600 less.
The difference was even more striking in Los Alamos County. The average income of those who left from 2020 to 2021 was over $100,000. But newcomers had an average of about $81,000.
Generally, high earners seemed to have moved to more rural areas. In New Mexico, Valencia, Sandoval, Taos, and Santa Fe Counties gained in terms of average gross income from migration, the data shows.
Similar patterns occurred across the U.S. In New York, Manhattan lost over $16 billion worth of taxable income, and in California, San Francisco lost more than $8 billion in taxable income, the analysis shows.
