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Dear New Yorkers,
As the holiday season arrives, New York’s economy continues its relatively steady but uneven recovery. Job growth stalled in October, but more recent data on local initial jobless claims and layoff notices was more encouraging, pointing to a continued healthy job market.
As we’ve been noting in recent months, much of the job creation year-to-date has been in health care & social assistance, with a higher proportion of low-paying jobs. Combined with a drop in federal pandemic aid, that has meant modestly declining per-capita income.
With the holiday season upon us, this month’s Spotlight focuses on the retail sector. Both retail and leisure & hospitality in New York City were hit hard by the pandemic and have recovered slowly amidst the shift to remote and hybrid work, plateauing below pre-pandemic levels (unlike nationally, where they have just about recovered fully). After steady growth in the years prior (driven in part by increases in the minimum wage), wages in the sector have stagnated since the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, the outer boroughs have fared meaningfully better than Manhattan.
Our report this month also includes a few other deep dives into the City’s finances. We’ve got more than you ever knew you wanted to know about the City’s prior-year receivables – money owed to the City by grantors for services rendered previously – including efforts to “bend the curve” as receivables have been rising in recent years.
And we’ve launched a new web-resource on how we pay for the City’s infrastructure and capital program, with attention to the state of good repair and costs of infrastructure maintenance, efforts to reform our capital project management to reduce delays and cost overruns, and our recently released annual report on the City’s debt burden and our capacity to borrow to meet our capital needs.
Finally, we released a first-of-its kind report this month shedding light on stark racial wealth disparities in New York State and City. The report, which comes as New York State considers establishing a commission to study reparations, reveals racial disparities in net household wealth, home values, retirement savings, investment income, and student debt.
Later this week, we’ll publish our office’s annual State of the City’s Economy and Finances, including an analysis of the November Financial Plan, the evolving costs of shelter and services for asylum seekers, budget cuts imposed by City Hall, and our outlook for the city’s economic and fiscal future.
Across eight nights of Hanukkah, twelve days of Christmas, seven days of Kwanzaa, we’ll keep watching the numbers,
Brad Lander
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