By Dr. Alex Joffe
June 3, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: New York City is the largest urban area in the US. It has the biggest economy and is the nation’s financial and cultural center. It also contains the largest single Jewish population in the world outside Israel. All those things are about to change. The twin impacts of the economic collapse created by the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing urban insurrections will intensify existing trends. People and power are moving out of New York at increasing rates. What are the implications for the US, the world order, and the global Jewish community?
City dwellers tend to share a unique conceit that their city and lifestyle will last forever. The slightest knowledge of history should put that to rest. But the sheer speed of the collapse of New York State and New York City gives one pause. In a mere three months, both have been transformed, probably permanently, by pandemic and now insurrection.
The coronavirus had already caused the economy to collapse. In April 2020, New York City’s unemployment rate exploded from 4.1% to 14.5%, with some 891,000 jobs lost. Hotel occupancy dropped by 80%, while ridership on the subways dropped 74% and travel from the wealthy northern suburbs was down 94%. Commercial real estate occupancy underwent a stunning collapse. In early March some 1.4 million workers occupied 469 million square feet of real estate. In a few weeks this plummeted to 96,000 essential workers.
But the social and economic trends crippling New York were longer in coming. New York City’s taxes run from 3.02 to 3.87%, on top of state taxes that bring the total to almost 9%. Movement out of New York City intensified in May even before the rioting, with the top destinations lower-tax states like Florida. Overall the state has seen an exodus of population for over a decade, losing 1.3 million residents.
Read more at https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/after-new-york/
