We touched on this briefly in an earlier post about NYC's dating numbers, and the response made clear it deserved its own deep dive. So here it is: the fullest neighborhood-by-neighborhood breakdown we could put together, built from two separate data sources that mostly agree with each other, which is about as close to confirmation as this kind of data gets.
First, the myth
"New York is 53% female" gets repeated constantly, usually as shorthand for "the odds are against straight men here." It's not wrong, exactly, that is the citywide population split. But it includes every age group, including a large population of older women who simply outlive men on average, which has nothing to do with anyone's actual dating pool.
Narrow the data to never-married singles between 20 and 34, the age band that actually matters for most people reading this, and NYCEDC's analysis of Census data found the opposite: men outnumbered women citywide, 742,400 to 729,500. A separate national analysis of unmarried adults across major cities found New York essentially dead even, about 99.5 single men for every 100 single women. The famous imbalance mostly isn't there. What's actually there is enormous variation by neighborhood, and that's the part worth mapping.
Where single women outnumber single men
Upper East Side. The single most cited example, and it holds up across two separate data sources. NYCEDC's Census analysis found young single women outnumber young single men here by nearly 2 to 1. A separate Trulia analysis of people living alone found the same pattern in the East 70s specifically: almost two women living alone for every man. This also happens to be where we host events at Jones Wood Foundry, and the numbers track with what we see in the room.
Upper West Side. Right alongside the East Side in Trulia's data, one of the highest concentrations of single women in the city, and it holds essentially all the way up to Inwood.
Gramercy Park and the Meatpacking District. Both flagged specifically in Trulia's analysis as high-concentration areas for single women living alone.
Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, and Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. All three show a meaningful skew toward single women, per the same living-alone analysis.
Forest Hills, Queens, and Castle Hill, the Bronx. Less talked about than the Manhattan neighborhoods above, but both show up in the data with a similar lean.
Where single men outnumber single women
Long Island City, Queens. The clearest counterexample in the entire dataset. Trulia's analysis found LIC, and Dutch Kills specifically, has one of the highest ratios of single men to single women of any neighborhood in the ten largest U.S. metros, not just New York. Newly built high-rises in recently redeveloped waterfront neighborhoods tend to skew this way, and LIC is close to the textbook example.
Lower Manhattan. Somewhat surprising given how female-skewed the rest of Manhattan runs, but both NYCEDC's and Trulia's data agree: the Financial District and surrounding blocks lean toward more single men living alone than single women.
Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Both neighborhoods show a single-men-leaning ratio in the living-alone data, consistent with their reputation as newer, younger, and more male-skewed than Brooklyn's brownstone neighborhoods further south.
Astoria, Woodside, Maspeth, Middle Village, and Glendale, Queens. A broad swath of central and western Queens all showed the same pattern in Trulia's map, more single men living alone than single women.
Jackson Heights, Queens. The other headline number from NYCEDC's original analysis: 1.7 single men for every single woman in the 20-to-34 never-married population, the most male-skewed ratio in that specific dataset.
Most of the South Bronx. Consistently on the single-men side of the ledger across the living-alone data.
Where it's close to even
Jamaica, Queens, and Pelham Gardens, the Bronx. NYCEDC's analysis found these two neighborhoods sitting almost exactly at a 1-to-1 ratio among young never-married singles, about as close to genuinely balanced as anywhere in the city gets.
East Harlem. The one notable exception to Manhattan's broader female-skewing pattern, Trulia's data found a slight edge toward single men here, breaking from the rest of the borough.
A note on methodology, because it matters here
These two data sources measure slightly different things, and being upfront about that makes the picture more useful, not less. NYCEDC's analysis looked specifically at never-married singles ages 20 to 34 using Census Public Use Microdata Areas. Trulia's analysis looked at all adults under 65 living alone, a proxy for "single" that isn't identical, someone can live alone and be in a relationship, or live with roommates and be single, and it also excluded an estimate of the city's gay and lesbian population to focus specifically on opposite-sex dating pools. Where both datasets agree, the Upper East Side, Jackson Heights, Long Island City, that agreement is a genuinely strong signal. Where only one source covers a neighborhood, treat it as directionally useful rather than exact.
What this actually means for where you go
None of this is really about finding a neighborhood where the odds are simply "in your favor," that framing tends to miss the point. It's more useful as an explanation for something a lot of New Yorkers have felt anecdotally without having the numbers behind it: why a Tuesday night crowd on the Upper East Side feels different from a Tuesday night crowd in Long Island City, and why that's not just vibes, it's demographics. If you've ever wondered why our Jones Wood Foundry events on the Upper East Side draw the room they draw, this is a real part of the answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is NYC really 53% female? Citywide, yes, but that figure includes every age group. Among never-married singles ages 20 to 34, the age range most relevant to dating, Census data analyzed by NYCEDC actually found slightly more men than women citywide.
Which NYC neighborhood has the most single women? The Upper East Side shows the strongest, most consistently documented skew toward single women, nearly 2 to 1 in both a Census-based analysis and a separate living-alone analysis of the East 70s specifically.
Which NYC neighborhood has the most single men? Long Island City, and Dutch Kills within it, shows one of the highest ratios of single men to single women of any neighborhood in the ten largest U.S. metro areas, according to Trulia's analysis of residents living alone.
Is any NYC neighborhood actually close to a 1-to-1 ratio? Jamaica, Queens, and Pelham Gardens in the Bronx both landed close to even in NYCEDC's Census analysis of young never-married singles.
Curious how the room actually stacks up? The only real way to find out is in person. See our upcoming events or explore curated introductions for something more one on one.
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