New Yorkers have long retired to the warmth and ease of the Florida coast, but eyebrow-raising numbers show that in recent years, most of those moving from the Empire State to the Sunshine State have been going there to find work.

Florida remains the top destination for outbound New Yorkers, but the new migrants are a lot younger than you’d expect.

According to the five-year American Community Survey, which the U.S. Census conducted from 2007 to 2011, 78% of the people who migrated from New York to Florida in those years were under age 60. The ages with the highest proportions of migrants to Florida were 18, 19, 21, 24, 28, 40 and 55.

Even leaving out the 18- and 19-year olds, many of whom are probably college students, that’s a lot of early retirees, and an astonishing number of young workers.

Even the numbers of New Yorkers moving to Florida in their late 30s and mid 40s aren’t much lower than the number of retirees moving at the end of their careers.

This means that an increasing number of New Yorkers either can’t afford to remain in their home state or can’t find work there — and are thus moving to states with friendlier business climates to find it.

Florida is not the only one: In 2011, other relatively pro-business states, like Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, also continued to attract more migrants from New York than they sent there.

In our new edition of the biannual book “Freedom in the 50 States,” we look at the laws of every state in the country to determine which places make it easiest to live and work.

We find that New York ranks dead last on overall freedom.

For one, Mayor Bloomberg famously made New York City the laughingstock of the country by devoting his valuable political capital to that most pressing priority, preventing people from buying sweetened beverages larger than 16 ounces.

Though a judge struck the regulation down on the eve of its enactment earlier this month, the fact that Bloomberg even proposed it says a lot about New York politicians’ beliefs about the role of government in people’s lives.

Not surprisingly, politicians who think their job is to stop you from drinking Big Gulps aren’t particularly sympathetic to your desire to keep your money.

New Yorkers face the highest state and local tax burdens in the country, at 14% of income. Add in federal, Social Security and Medicare taxes, and lower-middle-class workers can end up sending close to 35% of their paychecks to the government.

Between 2000 and 2010, New York saw 1.7 million of its residents move to other states. While the births of new New Yorkers and the arrival of new immigrants kept the Empire State’s overall population from dropping, that means nearly 9% of the state’s 2000 population moved elsewhere.

Meanwhile, at 23rd on our list, Florida is hardly the freest state in the union — but with no state income tax, it’s at least a lot more affordable than New York.

States that allow residents to keep more of their money and run businesses without undue burdens create higher personal income growth and draw steady streams of people from other states.

Of course, New Yorkers think about more than taxes and nanny state laws when deciding where to live, but when costs get too out of control, they tend to vote with their feet.

All of which has made the Sunshine State even more enticing for the young today than it has long been for the old.