By: Willy Cicci
New York City’s 7.6 percent unemployment rate is among the worst of all major US cities as workers drag their feet on returning to Manhattan offices and surrounding businesses struggle to recover from COVID-19’s economic pain, economists warn.
“While other cities have already roared back from the COVID slump, the Big Apple’s unemployment rate is still double the nationwide average of 3.8 percent, the most recent state and federal data shows,” writes Emily Crane and Ariel Zilber in an explosive new report from The New York Post.
“New York has had a tougher time getting people back to the office,” Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo, told The Post. “With folks not coming back to the office, all the office-adjacent employers have been slow to recover… you need to have people back in the office for folks to reopen restaurants or re-staff restaurants.”
Vitner goes on to say, “Vitner blamed “concerns about public safety” in NYC — fueled in part by a recent string of terrifying crimes in the subways that “has raised some fears.” Folks have been reluctant to use mass transit and it’s just been a tougher road back for New York City than it has been for other areas that are more car-dependent. I was certainly surprised to see that Chicago, which is certainly a city that is dealing with concerns about violent crime, has a much lower unemployment rate than New York does.”
Subway ridership across the city is currently still only 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels, the latest MTA data shows. Workers still aren’t returning in droves to their big Midtown and Financial District offices — even after the huge decline in Omicron-fueled cases resulted in COVID mandates being dropped. Only 16 percent of major NYC employers said average daily attendance in their Manhattan offices was at more than 50 percent, according to the latest survey by The Partnership for New York City business group, according to The New York Post.
About 75 percent of employers delayed their return-to-office plans due to the Omicron surge and 22 percent can’t yet predict when offices will be even half-full again, the poll taken in January showed. The slow return to pre-pandemic levels is continuing to have a negative impact on surrounding businesses — mostly the hospitality and entertainment industries. “The restraint still seen with business and international travel continues to dampen the city’s recovery,” Mark Hamrick, Bankrate’s senior economic analyst, told The Post.