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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Greg David is back with us now, contributor covering fiscal and economic issues for the news organization THE CITY, and director of the Business and Economics Reporting Program and the Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Greg's final article of the year takes stock of the state of New York City's recovery from the economic shocks of the pandemic and with some predictions for 2024.

The city is back to around where it was in the number of jobs from before the pandemic, there's a little spoiler alert, but there were some very New York ups and downs that we'll talk about too, and what Greg sees coming down the thruway or up the turnpike for 2024. Greg, Happy New Year. Thanks for giving us some working minutes on a holiday week. Welcome back to WNYC.

Greg David: Thank you, Brian. Glad to be here.

Brian Lehrer: The headline of your article looks right into 2024, but I want to take some time first to assess 2023. Maybe start on the most recent news if you've given it a look. Have you seen any numbers for the holiday shopping season? The New York Times headline on this yesterday with a national angle was, "Holiday spending increased defying fears of a decline." It says, "While the pace of growth slowed, spending stayed strong because of robust job growth and strong wage gain." Do you know if that reflects local results as well?

Greg David: The New York City economy is growing, but the whole point here is that we're not doing as well as the rest of the country. The national economy couldn't be better. I've been teaching classes about the great mismatch between the enormously strong national economy and Joe Biden's horrible poll ratings on the economy, so there's that great disconnect nationally.

In New York City, we mostly regained all the jobs we lost in the pandemic. There's a little bit of a asterisks here. The Adams administration made a big to-do in early November that we'd regained all the jobs we lost. The official numbers from the state don't quite show that. It all has to do with seasonally adjustments to the raw job numbers. You put it the right way. We have either regained all the jobs or we're incredibly close.

One of the things that's really important to know is that the most job growth that we saw in 2023 is in health care. Healthcare represented 90% of all the job-- Growth in private sector jobs, and within healthcare, home healthcare is the strongest area with 38,000 new positions last year. Why is that important? Well, health care and home health care jobs are good for people who are entering the workforce. They're in home health care. That's usually the first job for immigrants.

It gives them a way into the economy, that's good. What's bad about it is they're about the lowest paying jobs you can get. There's going to be a raise in January. It's going to take home healthcare workers a little above $18 an hour. It's a job, but it's not the kind of jobs we need if we're going to build a really strong post-pandemic economy.

Brian Lehrer: What else besides health care? 80,000 health care jobs is the number in your article and that's a lot. You're saying 90% of the new jobs in the private sector. Does that mean almost every other job that was created was in government?

Greg David: No, there were some government gains. What else we saw last year is that we continued to get a rebound in leisure and hospitality jobs as the tourism came back, and we saw some gains in construction, so we've got some of those. We had a little weakness during the end of the year in tech in New York which, of course, has been a great driver of the economy and a driver of really good high-paying jobs. Many of the numbers last year were complicated by the film and TV strike which saw-- Which, of course, cost the city 20,000 or 30,000 jobs. All of which, I think, we will recover by early next year, those are the yin and yangs of 2023.

Brian Lehrer: Let's dwell a little bit more on tech which you just mentioned because, in our field, media, this was a year of layoffs, here included, unfortunately. It was true of the tech giants, too. Google had layoffs, Meta had layoffs. We could continue down that list. Why, if the general economy is growing and people are buying things, like those numbers from the holiday shopping season, would these advertising-based areas not be getting flooded with ads?

Greg David: Well, I think the answer is that the tech giants just over-expanded. During the pandemic, there were enormous gains for online companies, and they just had too many people. One of the interesting things, though, we had some weakness in tech but not as much as they had out in California. For the most part, up to now, the tech layoffs from the Googles and Meta and Amazon here in New York have mostly been absorbed. Those people who wanted to stay in tech could be absorbed.

The long-term numbers are really good. The city controller did an analysis in the fall that showed tech jobs reaching 220,000 this year. That's more than Wall Street by about 50,000. While tech jobs don't pay as much as Wall Street, which the average pay is $400,000, they still at an average salary of $126,000 which is exactly twice the average salary for the rest of the private sector, so tech has been really important for us in New York. If we are going to grow a post-pandemic economy, we have to hope that tech can find its footing and continue to grow jobs.

Brian Lehrer: That assumes the tech sector will continue to grow jobs and New York is just competing for how many of those jobs we have. One of the big stories of 2023, at least one of the big narratives, and maybe you as a business and economics reporter want to bust the myth on this, I don't know, one of the big narratives is that, oh, it used to be a safe bet to major in computer science and go into that kind of field because workers with those skills were so in demand, but now artificial intelligence is going to come along.

They can do the programming, or it can do the programming, and there's going to be shrinkage in that field and there aren't going to be as many human beings needed at the Googles and the Metas and the Amazons and and all of those, and it's going to be a shrinkage industry. What does your reporting indicate on that as far as you know?

Greg David: Well, I want to say two things about that. One, at the J School, we have all those doubts about the future of journalism.

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Greg David: When we can't go to sleep at night, it's because, oh my god, is AI going to end the world of journalism? The thinking in THE CITY at the moment is that AI won't actually hurt the New York City tech economy. Indeed, it is our great opportunity. Both THE CITY, EDC, President Andrew Kimball, and some tech executives I talked to, including somebody who started an AI company, moved back from Los Angeles to start it in New York, say that New York can be the center of AI research in the whole country.

EDC found a study which said that there are 40,000 people in the New York area who have either AI skills or what they call AI-adjacent skills. THE CITY is betting and assuming that, with our tech strengths, that many of our tech companies will move into AI and be very successful and need to hire a lot of people to do their work.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, help us report this story. What's the economic headline from your sector of the New York area economy? 212-433-WNYC. The 2023 economic headline from your sector of the New York area economy. Could be that we have a lot of you listening today who have regular nine to five jobs who don't listen to the show on a regular basis, but this is a holiday week, so you're off at this time of day, and you are listening.

We would love to hear from some of you. What's the economic headline from your sector of the New York area economy? The 2023 economic headline from your sector. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Call or text for Greg David, business and economics reporter for the nonprofit news organization, THE CITY, as well as the business and economics reporting director at the Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY. 212-433- WNYC, 433-9692. Let's take a phone call right now. Here's Jack in Rockland who may be reporting on one of those sectors. Jack, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in.

Jack: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. Have a happy new year. I just have some personal experience. I have personal experience with poverty. My father died when I was four, my mother was [unintelligible 00:10:27] with four children. She was a nurse making, in the 40s and 50s, nothing. Anyway, so I've lived poverty, so it's not a concept with me. The other thing I've done is I've been a volunteer tax preparer in Rockland County for AARP. I just got my 30-year certificate.

One of the places I worked was at the library in Spring Valley in New York. Spring Valley has a large African American population and also a huge Haitian population. I took three years of French in high school and two years of French in college so as far as [unintelligible 00:11:16] what had happened [unintelligible 00:11:17] they'd come to me and I'd say, "Good morning, Mrs. [unintelligible 00:11:21]." They always loved that.

Anyway, a lot I've done taxes for. Well, maybe two or three dozen home health workers. Home health workers are treated like garbage. They should be paid $50 an hour, but that's-- They put up with so much garbage from the terrible bosses that they have. Then you get stuck. When you get stuck, you're assigned to some person. One of the things they do is they scream at you all day.

For $18 an hour, it's going to be very hard to get these people. These were strong Haitian women, strong Black women doing this job. Believe me, their job is a lot harder than working at Goldman Sachs. I'm finished with my rant. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Jack,-

Jack: Have a Happy New Year.

Brian Lehrer: -thank you very much. That was really a great tribute to Haitian women and other home healthcare workers and, yes, the lives they lead. At least on the job. Greg, there's been a lot of talk about a shortage of home health aids as the number of elderly people in our area grows, and therefore the demand increases. Do you know anything about the state of that shortage? It sounds like, certainly from the way Jack describes it, and Jack's hardly the only one who has described it that way, as a job a lot of people would get away from if they could.

Greg David: Well, I think that's a good thing. We want these people who are home healthcare workers to move up the economic ladder. We just always need new people to take those positions. Frankly, the asylum crisis could represent a great answer, right? These are the kinds of jobs the asylum seekers could take to get into the New York City economy if we could make it legal for them to work. The problem with home healthcare is simply it's all paid by taxpayers.

Brian Lehrer: Well, it's not all paid by taxpayers, but so much of it is paid by taxpayers. Medicaid does fund home health aides, Medicare doesn't. A lot of people-

Greg David: The vast majority of [unintelligible 00:13:49]

Brian Lehrer: -not on Medicaid can't afford private home health aides to cover themselves for all day or 24/7. Right?

Greg David: Yes, but also there are lots of people who don't need all day. Right?

Brian Lehrer: Right, exactly.

Greg David: They need somebody for a few hours. The constraint on home healthcare is the budgets that are available. Indeed, there's a big difference between the economic forecast from the Mayor and the Independent Budget Office. The two of them are right around 80,000 jobs to be gained next year, and the City's Comptroller's Office which is down about 30,000 jobs for next year.

One of the big differences is that the Comptroller believes that, because of budget squeezes, there won't be money to expand home healthcare, and the admini-- The Adams administration and the IBO thinks there would. That's actually the big issue for the coming year. What will government, Medicaid, and other programs look like, and can they finance a continued expansion of home healthcare in it?

Brian Lehrer: As we assess some of the economic trends in the New York area in 2023 and look ahead to 2024 with Greg David from the news organization, The Coty, and The Graduate School of Journalism, the Newmark School at CUNY. Let's take another call. Billy in East Orange, you're on WNYC. Hi, Billy.

Billy: Yes. I just would like to mention that, in New Jersey, a study came out with the definition of the true poverty level. There's a tremendous amount of criticism of the way poverty is defined by the federal government. Let me see if I can get this one example. The true poverty line for a single adult in New Jersey would be about $31,000. The government's definition is $13,000. According to this approach, what it would take for a family not to rely on any government assistance, have a little bit of money to take one tiny little vacation.

This report estimates that about one-third of all the people in New Jersey are living in what they call the true poverty line. When we look at our economy state by state, region by region, and can say something like, "The economy is doing real well.", I find that to be the imagination of someone who doesn't seem to know enough people who are struggling mightily with finances, income, household problems. I don't know what the word is, but a person who thinks about the true poverty line and then says the economy of the United States is doing really well, that's an oxymoron.

Brian Lehrer: To some degree, Billy and Greg, maybe it's about what actually gets measured. When they talk about an unemployment rate and the unemployment rate is back down to around pre-pandemic levels in the 3% to 4% range, which is considered really good, the unemployment rate doesn't take into account people who've given up looking for work.

When they talk about economic growth, yes, there may have been strong economic growth in 2023, but it doesn't take into account the distribution of that growth. Greg, I wonder if you have a thought on Billy's comment and who gets left out and if these general statistics that we have been hearing about a strong US economy, generally, based on wage growth and the number of jobs and GDP, winds up being misleading with respect to the true picture of how much poverty there is.

Greg David: Well, I would say that he just encapsulated Joe Biden's great problem because he said those things, but let's go through the facts. The unemployment rate is near a 50-year low. Yes, people are left out, but people are always left out of that number. Inflation, which was the huge problem, at the beginning of last year, is trending back towards 2%. Consumers continue to have the wherewithal to spend.

Tax revenues in many places are above expectations because of it and, ationally, not in New York, but nationally, low-wage workers have made the biggest gains over the last few years. Is the economy perfect, no, but this economy is as good as we've had in a long time. Now, the second question that comes up, however, is the safety net. It is true that poverty is back up in the United States, but it's back up because the pandemic assistance that we had through the federal aid bills has disappeared. Primarily the Child Tax Credit.

The expanded Child Tax Credit reduced child poverty in New York City by almost a third. I think even maybe more than a third. You can always say the glass is half full or half empty, but nationally, I think the glass is close to three-quarters full. Now in New York, we have not done as well as the rest of the country, and that's what the Adams administration doesn't spend any time talking about.

Yes, in the fall we probably regained all the jobs we lost in the pandemic, but the country as a whole regained those jobs in the summer of 2022. Given the forecast that I looked at, by the end of 2024, the nation will have gained-- Be at record job levels 4% above the pre-pandemic level. The best New York will do is 2% above. If the city control this we'll be only 1% above. We regained the jobs we lost more than a year after the rest of the country, and we're not keeping pace with the job growth elsewhere in the country, that's a matter of some concern.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have a quick take on the initial argument that Billy made which is that the federal government's official poverty line is ridiculously low? He was saying it's $13,000 for a single individual. It should be more like $30,000 if you take what poverty really feels like into account and the real cost of things, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know if you've looked into that, but that's always a dispute that people have.

Greg David: Yes, the federal poverty number's not a good number. The reason to pay attention to it is not because it is a precise measure of poverty, but because we are interested in change. We want to know whether poverty is going up or down, and therefore we need long historical series to figure that out. The city's got a number too that's much different than the federal number.

If you remove the safety net, consideration of the safety net, well that distorts things as well. People who make low wages in the United States do get an income tax credit, they do get food assistance, they do qualify for Medicaid. I think you have to understand that the safety net plays an important role and the status of that safety net and whether it's being expanded or contracted is, I think, where the conversation needs to be centered.

Brian Lehrer: We were talking before about AI and whether it's a job creator or a job destroyer, or what mix of those two things. We have two callers, I think, with very different takes. We're going to take Paul in Soho and John in Gramercy Park. John, hang on, you're going to be second. Paul in Soho, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Paul: Hi, Brian. It has recently reported that Google is preparing to lay off 30,000 workers because their AI-powered ad sales engine is such a success. It's only the beginning. I personally was involved in the outsourcing revolution from 1998 to 2008. In New York, we've hollowed out entire industries here during that period of time. Mostly in publishing law firms, legal services, something called litigation support.

Entire industries are gone from New York and will never come back because those jobs were outsourced to the Philippines and India. It's unlikely they'll ever come back. AI will do the same thing during the next 10 years, 20 years. It could happen very quickly. 30,000 jobs is not a small number from a single company.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Paul. Paul, [unintelligible 00:23:24]

Paul: People are being misled when they believe that AI is not going to take jobs.

Brian Lehrer: Paul, thank you very much. John in Gramercy, you are on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hi, Brian, thanks for taking my call. I don't think I strictly disagree with what the previous caller was saying, but basically-- I'm a senior software engineer. I work for a big tech company. The line I've been hearing, similar to what you were saying before, is like we're going to get junior engineers, junior employees, we're going to give them AI, and we're going to have a revolution. We're not going to need the senior people. We're going to be more productive and whatever.

My experience has been the opposite which is like, we've been using these AI tools as senior employees, and we don't really need support staff like junior engineers so much, so I think the opposite thing is going to occur. That people who know what they're doing, people who have experience, are going to be able to take these tools and they're just not going to need junior employees anymore. Experience really counts because these are very sophisticated tool. Yes, just some food for thought.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. For you [unintelligible 00:24:36] --

John: It might cost some jobs, but maybe not the ones that people expect.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. An interesting contrast, Greg. I wonder if you've heard that projection that the first caller cited of another 30,000 job-- Round of layoffs coming at Google. I hadn't seen that yet if that's a real thing.

Greg David: I hadn't seen it yet, and it has very little credibility. Let me just read to you-- I just Googled it. It's according to a report by LiveMint, which I don't even know what it is, which quoted the information. We got three levels here. I think it's fair to say this is a great example of not believing what's on the internet. Look, let's do the long historical look here. Technology has been portrayed as destroying jobs for hundreds of years.

Whether it was the railroad or whether it was computers in the first case, that they were going to revolutionize life and there would be no jobs left. It hasn't happened. Could it be different with AI? Of course it could, but my reading of history is that it hasn't happened up to now, why would we think it would happen. Also, I think it's fair to say that, in every past technological revolution, many new jobs have been created.

There can be transition difficulties, but many new jobs have been created. The third thing which I pull from a Paul Krugman column I read a few months ago in which he looked at the way the advance in computers dealt with the economy, it takes a long time for new technologies to change the economy. The one thing I've learned in my decades in business journalism is, when they say it's going to be different this time, I know it's not going to be different this time. Therefore--

Brian Lehrer: At least it's not necessarily going to be different this time, but go ahead.

Greg David: Maybe it will be different with AI, maybe it's not. We're just scratching the surface of what it is and could be. I remain skeptical until proven otherwise.

Brian Lehrer: All right, we leave it there. Listeners, read Greg David's final story of the year in the news organization, THE CITY, on the 2023 and 2024 economic outlook for New York City. He is a contributor covering fiscal and economic issues for THE CITY and director of the Business and Economics Reporting Program and the Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program at the Newmark Graduate of Journalism at CUNY. Greg, thanks for all this. Happy New Year. Talk to you in 2024.

Greg David: Happy New Year.

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