New York has recovered less than half the jobs lost between February and April 2020. This report explores the industries leading the recovery, including the leisure and hospitality sector, retail, and construction, and shows which industries continue to lose jobs.
One year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, 4 out of 5 small businesses continue to report an overall negative impact in their business. This report explores the latest U.S. Census Bureau survey data from New York’s small businesses, the allocation of fiscal relief for New York from the American Rescue Plan of 2021, and the latest figures from the Comptroller’s monthly cash report.
A year after the first case of COVID-19 was reported in New York State, the economic disruption caused by the pandemic remains severe. One key measure is the total number of New Yorkers claiming unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. The figure remains elevated 11 months after the initial surge of job losses, with 2.4 million claims reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as of mid-February 2021.
The Executive Budget Financial Plan for State Fiscal Year 2021-22 projects that federal operating aid spending in the current fiscal year will total $76.6 billion, an increase of 30 percent over last year. The proposed Budget assumes the State will receive at least $3 billion in unrestricted federal assistance for each of the next two fiscal years. However, that level of funding would not be enough to avert painful spending cuts to local governments, nonprofits and other service providers, or tax increases.
Each year, thousands of New Yorkers take the opportunity, while paying their State taxes, to support a variety of charitable purposes through the State’s personal income tax check-off programs.
The COVID-19 pandemic ended a period of economic expansion in New York City during which new records for population, tourism, employment, and property values were achieved. As a result, City revenues grew rapidly from FY 2010 to FY 2019, enabling City spending to grow by 55 percent, nearly four times the rate of inflation, and provide a budget cushion of more than 10 percent of City-funded revenues at the start of FY 2020.
New York ranks seventh among all the states in the percentage of adults who are experiencing food scarcity, at 14 percent compared to the 11 percent national rate, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest Household Pulse Survey.
Unemployment rates for New York State, New York City and the balance of the State spiked upward in April 2020. At that point, and in the months immediately before, the percentages of officially unemployed workers in the City and in the rest of the State were nearly identical — but those numbers have since diverged sharply.
DiNapoli's office issues a state cash report every month identifying actual state revenues and spending from the prior month. The cash report focuses primarily on the General Fund and All Governmental Funds. The General Fund is the major operating fund of the state. All Governmental Funds includes General, Special Revenue, Debt Service and Capital Projects funds, as well as funds from the federal government.
This past year, New York faced extraordinary fiscal challenges as a result of the economic downturn, the failure to exercise budgetary restraint during more prosperous times, and the failure to act quickly when the State’s finances began to show signs of difficulty, as well as the collapse of the stock market through 2002 and the devastation, both in human and financial terms, of 9-11.
