NYC Employment Post-Pandemic Won’t Recover Until 2025: Study

NEW YORK CITY — Slow and fragile.

That’s the course New York City’s economic recovery will take from the coronavirus crisis, a new study predicts.

The study —“Outlook for the City’s Economy: A Slow and Fragile Recovery” — released this week by the city’s Independent Budget Office paints a grim picture of job losses, falling income and real estate slowdown amid the pandemic.

Jobs in particular likely will recover on a snail’s pace through 2025, the last year in the study’s forecast.

“By the end of the forecast period, total city employment will have nearly—but not quite—reached the levels seen at the end of 2019, before the pandemic began,” the study states.

Recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has been an evergreen topic during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daily briefings.

Hizzoner hopes efforts during his last term — which include a “recovery czar,” $17 billion in major city projects and more — will help jumpstart the city’s flagging economy.

And the study makes clear the city faces a deep economic hole.

The city lost 557,000 jobs in 2020, according to the study.

The loss was originally worse — 889,000 jobs — but a “relatively strong initial recovery” helped them rebound before flattening out in the year’s waning months, the study states.

“Local job growth is expected to remain positive throughout the financial plan period, but at a much slower pace than during the latter half of 2020, as many of the jobs that were easiest to add back have already been restored,” the study states.

Some job sectors such as health care, information and professional or technical services will do better than others, the study forecasts. Leisure and hospitality had the weakest projected recovery, with its jobs down by 23.2 percent by the end of 2025.

Other sectors such as retail and wholesale trade and administrative and support services also took a massive hit in the pandemic.

“IBO expects these sectors to begin adding jobs again in 2021, although—as with overall employment— they are not forecast to reach pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2025,” according to the study.

Read the full study here.