This news probably wouldn’t be particularly newsworthy were it not for the fact that few in the media have been talking about it. For the past several years, there has been what the New York Post describes as a “giant, sucking sound” coming from the financial sector in New York City. That “whooshing” sound you hear has been caused by more than 150 major financial firms on Wall Street calling it quits and moving to more friendly climes around the country, particularly in the South. And they have taken just shy of one trillion dollars in assets, along with some of the highest earners (and highest taxpayers) with them. This exodus has quietly gutted the city’s revenue base and left a lot of very pricy real estate vacant, causing property values to slowly degrade in what was long considered some of the most prestigious property in the country. And the state and municipal governments are the responsible parties in this collapse.

A giant, sucking sound is coming out of Wall Street — and it’s siphoning staggering sums of money out of the Big Apple while handing business to Florida and other states farther south.

Nearly 160 Wall Street firms have moved their headquarters out of New York since the end of 2019, taking nearly $1 trillion — yes, that’s trillion with a “T” — in assets under management with them, according to data from 17,000 companies compiled by Bloomberg.

Looking to dodge rampant crime, stiff taxes and an increasingly exorbitant cost of living, 158 fed-up financial firms representing a whopping $993 billion in assets have packed up and left the Big Apple, taking thousands of high-paid employees with them, the data shows.

So where are these firms going? There are a number of destinations, but you probably won’t be surprised to learn that Florida is at the top of the list. That’s where Carl Icahn, the billionaire head of Icahn Capital Management headed a couple of years ago, opening a new office in a Miami suburb. He removed more than 22 billion dollars in assets from the Big Apple and vacated a prime piece of real estate that attracted few buyers interested in taking it over.

Paul Singer’s Elliott Management firm took an even more staggering $59.2 billion with him in 2020 when he shipped out to West Palm Beach. He now resides in a mansion there where he pays no state income tax and drives many local investments.

The bottom line for this city is not at all trivial. As the linked report notes, Wall Street financial firms accounted for 16% of all economic activity in the city last year and more than seven percent of such activity across the entire state. And the hit to the state and federal tax revenue base has been staggering. Wall Street financial firms paid $5.4 billion in New York taxes in 2022 and their CEOs and staff paid nearly one-quarter of all personal taxes collected. Every time one of these firms ships out, the revenue of both the city and the state falls.

And the exodus is far from over. Goldman Sachs, one of the largest remaining entities in the financial sector, has been investing heavily in the Dallas area. They are currently in the process of constructing a three-building complex in the city. Not surprisingly, the cost of living (and doing business) is 40 percent lower in Texas. For a company the size of Goldman Sachs, that’s a seriously large load of cabbage to save and they are expected to largely vacate the premises soon.

So who is to blame for all of this migration activity? That would be the Empire State’s elected officials who have driven up tax rates to 15.9%, making it the highest-taxed state in the nation, surpassing even Massachusetts. Gotham also has the sixth highest cost of living of any city in the country. And it’s no longer very safe to even try to commute back and forth to your overpriced office there. Why would the highest-earning, most productive people want to stay?

But don’t worry. That population drain is being more than made up for by the flood of illegal migrants currently taking over most public spaces in New York. Granted, they don’t pay any taxes or contribute much to the economy and they mostly just drain additional resources. But they give the city a lot more “color and character,” right? Stop wasting your time and escape from New York if you have the means available to do so.