Reform and Rigor in CUNY's Common Core

PAGETURNERS
CUNY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM
Why
NYC’s
Recession
Was
Shorter
Than
USA’s
By Cathy Rainone
WHILE the United
States lost 8.4 million
jobs — about 6 percent
— during the 27-month
Great Recession that
started in December
2007, employment in New York City
declined by 3.5 percent, and the downturn
lasted only 17 months here. Why did New
York outperform the rest of the nation? The
obvious answer, says Greg David, director of
the Business and Economics reporting program
at the CUNY Graduate School of
Journalism, is the Wall Street bailout. But,
says David, there were other, less apparent
reasons too.
For one thing, the city’s economy was
more diversified than most realized and
tourism was strong.
“New York City’s economy has changed a
lot, manufacturing is no longer important,”
he says. “Manufacturing is cyclical, and the
biggest sectors by jobs now in New York
City are education and health and they are
not cyclical. They’re mostly government
funded and they don’t decline as the rest of
the economy contracts.”
David traces New York City’s economy
through the last 50 years, from the election
of Mayor John Lindsay in 1965 through the
most recent Great Recession, in his first
book, Modern New York: The Life and
Economics of a City. He also writes a blog
Journalist Greg David's
book traces the city's
economy over 50 years
and also looks ahead.
and a column for Crain’s New York
Business, where he has worked as an editor,
as well.
David explores the rise of Wall Street in
the late ’80s and how, despite its ups and
downs, it has made the city richer than ever.
But in recent years, he says, the New York
economy has diversified enough to better
offset future woes of Wall Street and the
decline in manufacturing.
With the city losing 400,000 factory jobs
between 1969 and 1977, tourism emerged as
the next big job creator, he says. Five years
after the Marriot Marquis opened its doors
in Times Square in 1985, writes David, the
Convention and Visitors Bureau estimated
that the tourism industry created 143,600
jobs. Currently, tourism accounts for more
than 300,000 jobs, a 160,000 increase that
almost makes up for the 184,000 manufacturing
jobs lost in the same period.
No sector of diversification is guaranteed,
however. “We don’t know if tourism
can grow, nothing grows to the sky,” says
David. And the “tech boom is not for sure, it
could collapse like it did in the 90s, higher
education needs the city’s help to continue
to expand, and the film and TV production
industry is dependent on the tax credit.”
Some still hope the city can revive a
large-scale manufacturing sector, but David
says it’s a thing of the past. “Manufacturing
has no significant role in the New York City
area.”
David also disagrees with the belief held
by some that the city’s middle class is
shrinking. The new middle-class jobs, he
says, are in film and TV production, higher
education and the Internet. Combined they
total about 300,000 jobs. “Hairdressers who
work in the movie business make more than
$100,000 a year; they are not the classic
middle class jobs. But people do have classic
middle-class lifestyles as a result.”
38 SPRING 2012