The Recession: Not So Bad if You're Rich

If you're a New Yorker, I have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news: congratulations, it's likely that you weren't as heavily impacted by the recession as other Americans! The bad news: if you don't live in the tonier parts of Manhattan, that good news probably doesn't apply to you after all.

The average New Yorker is less likely than the average American as a whole to be facing unemployment, bankruptcy or foreclosure. For people who own houses or apartments here, home values have held up better than in most other big cities in the country. Job losses weren't as catastrophic as predicted, tourism dollars are flowing into the city like crazy, Wall Street bounced back surprisingly well and most economists think New York will be spared the dreaded double-dip recession. New Yorkers who remained employed in professional or managerial positions may have even seen salary increases.

However. As Community Service Society of New York CEO David R. Jones put it in an interview with the New York Times, "the farther away from Midtown one wander[s], the more ravaged the city appear[s]." According to a recent survey cited in the Times, only about one-fifth of poor New Yorkers think the city's economy is improving. That should come as no surprise, since lower-level workers in the city have been especially affected by pay cuts, with the median weekly pay for workers in non-managerial positions hovering around $472, or more than 10 percent less than it was in early 2007. That dip is partially tied to a huge drop-off in construction jobs that came along with the recession and which have not come back.

This data just goes to show that we need to take "The recession is over!" stories with a grain of salt. On paper, it may seem that things are getting better — but try telling that to all the low-income Americans who haven't had jobs in a year or more. The only "on paper" they care about is their paycheck.

Photo credit: David Salafia