Compare to other US cities, New York City recovery lags behind

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

The recuperation of New York City from the ill effects of Covid-19 is yet to get better compared to other U.S. metropolitan cities as this well-known destination continues to experience job loss related to tourism, Fitch Ratings said this on Tuesday.

If we look at the job loss during the worst months of the pandemic in 2020, New York had regained 56% as of September, worse than the Northeast region’s median rate of 69% and the major metropolitan cities in US with a figure of 71%, said Fitch Senior Director Olu Sonola.

Slower recovery of leisure and hospitality employment is one of the main reasons of this negative impact which accounts for a quarter of the positions that are still lost, he said.

“The leisure and hospitality center continues to be a significant drag on employment recovery in the NYC metro,” he said.

Roughly two months after the period seen in the evaluation report of Fitch, that picture is slowly starting to improve, with international tourists just beginning to return.

Once the epicenter of the outbreak in the US, New York has witnessed high office vacancy rates with depressed ridership on its transit system as work and everyday life is yet to revive completely. For instance last week, weekday ridership on subway was more than 40% below pre-pandemic levels.

Tourism loss has caused a major blow. The most-populous U.S. city ranked 48 out of large 53 metropolitan regions in recouping the job loss during the pandemic as of September, according to Fitch’s analysis of federal data.

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