Whether workers who fled Manhattan’s office towers during the pandemic would finally return in a rush, too, last month as kids returned to school, people watching New York City pull itself out of COVID-19’s shadow wondered.
At least part time, more workers did return to their offices, as the summer ended, limited data suggests. But some aspects of the city’s economic ecosystem could be changed for good and that the onset of autumn has also made it clearer than ever that the recovery will be drawn out.
James Parrott said, director of Economic and Fiscal Policies at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School “between office workers and their offices we certainly entered a changed relationship”.
Around the commuting class that’s meant hardship for New Yorkers who are part of the economy.
Over an internet connection they are the workers whose livelihoods can’t happen, in the right place at the right time who have depended on that serendipity of a customer being, pop into a store, the sudden impulse to buy a snack, and throw some dollars into a street performer’s tip bucket.
Like Emad Ahmed, 58, they’re people running his food cart on a plaza near Wall Street and the World Trade Center, who for more than two decades has worked in lower Manhattan.
Ahmed came back and really wished he could say the same for all the workers he relied on as customers, the pandemic forced a pause, but as soon as he was able, into Manhattan only a few days a week many of them were still working at home and coming, at most.
He said “You can go to the subway and the bus without masks, and people still don’t come”. Nobody uses a mask now, like before it’s “absolutely not and the pandemic (is) almost done”.
Since then, including office occupancy in the metro area getting closer to the halfway mark, a transition back to the way things were, and indeed, some had looked to Labour Day as a possible catalyst, some data has shown momentum.
With one day last week reaching almost 3.9 million riders, Subway ridership is on an upswing, as well. The weekday totals have been inching up overall since the holiday, while that’s only about 64% of a comparable day pre-pandemic.
The Partnership for New York City last month found that on an average day a survey of Manhattan companies was put out, as of the beginning of September just under half of Manhattan office workers were in their offices.
Only 9% of workers were, with the largest group, 37%, in for three days a week, but when it comes to being back in the office full time. Sixteen percent of workers were still completely remote.
Despite city government and corporate leaders urging workers to come back, looking ahead through the rest of the year to the beginning of 2023, the survey didn’t show those numbers changing drastically.
Kathryn Wilde, president and CEO of the partnership said that “People have gotten used to the flexibility and the benefits of not having to commute to the office every day”. “They’re going to have good reasons to go back.”
To some neighbourhoods in the outer boroughs remote work has brought an upswing in jobs and liveliness, as people staying close to home have brought their coffee and other daily needs to their local outlets.
Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, said that hasn’t made up for what’s been lost, a public policy think tank.
“In some ways, since the depths of March 2020 it’s almost miraculous how much the city’s economy has recovered,” Bowles said.
As of August, just about 810,000 had come back, about 84%; New York City lost more than 970,000 jobs when the pandemic hit.
“Where entrepreneurs and small businesses are struggling left and right seeing a fraction of their previous customers there are still really large pockets, particularly around the central business districts”, Bowles said.
Ahmed is among them. He sees maybe 60% of what he would have before the pandemic, On his best days, midweek. Even getting to 10-15% can be a challenge, at the worst.
The partial return has been enough, for some dependent on office life. Almost all of the commercial office space cleaners represented by the union are back at work, Denis Johnston, executive vice president of 32BJ Service Employees International Union, said.
Whether companies have some or all of their employees back on a given day, the spaces need to be cleaned and maintained, so his members are needed, he said.
Like taxi driver Sukhdarshan Singh, some have learned to adjust. He’s finding fares at other times, while there are fewer commuters.
Singh said, a cabbie for about 35 years “Office people are not back, but evenings and weekends, people are out”.
But other sectors are suffering. While clothing stores have seen about 62%, among retail outlets, food and beverage stores have seen only about 66% of jobs come back, according to the New York City Independent Budget Office.
Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union said “If office workers are “not in the city, they’re not shopping in the city”.
He said “Stores are operating with fewer people because there are fewer customers”.
In August the city’s unemployment rate was 6.6%, significantly higher than the national rate of 3.7%.
People that operate food trucks and office workers provide a big chunk of their sales so many more businesses that are really dependent, Bowles said office workers being slow to go back is “absolutely going to impact the bottom line for tons of vendors”.
Source:- https://usnewscap.com/nyc-niches-out-from-covids-shadow-in-drawn-out-recovery/
