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Recession recovery remains uneven for NYers

By
John Aidan Byrne
Published Dec. 21, 2013, 9:12 p.m. ET

Wall Street money is making a comeback, but the gap between the haves and have-nots is growing, with not all middle-class New Yorkers feeling the recovery.

First the good news: More than 11 percent of households in New York’s metro region had incomes over $200,000 last year. That’s nearly twice the national rate, the Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey reveals.

The 19 million residents of the metro region, from Midtown to its far-flung suburbs, recorded a median income of $63,982 last year.

The middle class faces a stark reality. Declines in income and rising costs push them down the economic ladder, closer to the poor struggling to climb up.

An analysis by New York’s Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI) shows inflation-adjusted median family incomes in New York City in the decade up to 2010. These incomes grew by 55 percent in high-income neighborhoods, declined by 3 percent in middle-income neighborhoods and were unchanged in low-income neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, median income for “renter” New York City households jumped by 24 percent. That did not keep pace with median monthly gross rents — which rose even faster, by 53 percent.

The recovery from the Great Recession has been uneven, analysts say. New York median family incomes, adjusting for inflation, declined slightly in 2012 and are $3,800, or 6.5 percent, below the 2008 level, the FPI notes.

Nationwide, inflation-adjusted median family incomes fell by $5,000, or 7.5 percent, over the same time.

New York’s middle class, the foundation of strong economic growth, is being squeezed economically, says James Parrott, the FPI’s chief economist. That’s a reflection of a broader nation trend.

An estimated 51 percent of the US population was in the middle class at the start of the decade. That’s a sharp decline from 61 percent 40 years earlier.

That decline is certainly apparent in New York. Parrott notes that from the 2008 recession through the end of last year, unemployed New York City residents approximately doubled.

There was no increase in the number receiving public welfare, but the number on food stamps grew by an alarming two-thirds — meaning they required some help.

Many see the flood of newly minted New York millionaires as a great boon to the New York economy.

However, New York’s middle class pays a disproportionately higher share of local taxes than the richest 1 percent, Parrott says. New York City’s poverty rate rose from 18.2 percent in 2008 to 21.2 percent last year, according to the American Community Survey.

That’s an increase of 3 percentage points, and more than the nation’s overall rise.

Manhattan’s poverty rate was about 18 percent last year, compared with 31 percent in the Bronx. (The US government put the poverty level for a family of four at $23,050 in 2012.)

The Bronx’s median household income was $32,460; in Manhattan it was more than $67,000.

The New York metro region is not the nation’s worst when it comes to income disparity. That belongs to Sebastian-Vero Beach, Fla., metro region. It’s followed by No. 2, Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Conn.