New York City’s Independent Budget Office just released its take on Mayor Bloomberg’s budget. One data tidbit: the IBO’s analysts say that though the city’s recession job losses were less severe relative to losses in the rest of the country, Gotham’s wage drop was huge:
The collapse of earnings in the city was on a scale more consistent with the extent of the dislocations for the U.S. economy as a whole. Real average wages in New York City fell a total of 12.2 percent during 2008 and 2009, by far the steepest drop on record in the city.
Wall Street comprised two-thirds of this fall, with a 27.2 percent drop over two years — a decline “without precedent, even going back as far as the Great Depression.”
The IBO notes further that although Wall Street profits are up since then, revenues are not. Securities firms are making money because the Fed has kept their borrowing costs so low.
In other news, “marine borers” that want to eat our bridges should do it now. The city has shifted $88.2 million in capital funding to protect infrastructure from these “aquatic organisms” from this year to next.
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