New York City’s Wall Street Dependency

Several NYC media outlets have taken advantage of tax day 2010 to analyze the city’s on-again, off-again love affair with Wall Street. Patrick McGeehan over at the New York Times started the review yesterday after Federal Reserve economists indicated that an upswing for the regional economy might be on the way.

While no one is jumping on our bandwagon of declaring that happy days are here again, just yet, they are giving out slight hints that perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to shine just a bit brighter. The Wednesday Fed Report said that the NYC economy has shown noticeable signs of improvement. And this is where Jessica Pressler at New York Magazine chimed in, comparing NYC’s relationship with Wall Street to that of an aging billionaire with his hot-to-trot trophy wife. McGeehan reported in his article that Rae Rosen, a regional economist at the New York Fed, “traced the rise in the city’s dependence on Wall Street, showing how financial jobs had provided about one-eighth of all wages paid in New York in 1972. By 2007, more than one-third of all wages came from the ‘very volatile’ financial sector.” To quote Ms. Pressler, “…without Wall Street, who would keep us in the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed?”

Source New York Times and New York Magazine