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A 'resilient' NYC economy faces hurdles, including affordability issues, report says
By
Arun Venugopal
Published Dec 11, 2025
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By
Arun Venugopal
Published Dec 11, 2025
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The New York City Economic Development Corporation released a generally upbeat economic outlook for the city on Thursday, noting continuing low unemployment and a boost in job growth in the outer boroughs, but also flagged areas of concern, including affordability.
The nonprofit said in the annual “State of the New York City Economy” report that the five boroughs remain a draw for young, college-educated adults. It said professionals are also returning to offices at rates easily eclipsing other cities across the country. At once, the city has experienced encouraging job growth beyond Manhattan.
But the report pointed to red flags stemming from Trump administration policies, noting that “uncertainty about immigration, trade, interest rates, and tariffs all loom over the world’s largest municipal economy,” one that generates $2 trillion in GDP for the metropolitan area.
“New York City's economy has proven itself quite resilient in 2025,” said Andrew Kimball, the president and CEO of the EDC, in a call with reporters in advance of the release of the findings.
The authors also expressed concern about the ongoing problems of affordability and the housing shortage, along with “never-ending increases in monthly energy bills and everyday food and child care costs.”
“New jobs have skewed toward low-wage sectors, where many workers are living paycheck to paycheck,” the report stated, “or high-wage sectors that are often not accessible to many New Yorkers.”
The city has continued to lose middle-income families, many of whom are departing for the suburbs due to lower housing prices.
The EDC said job growth also appears to be slowing.
The metropolitan area added 25,000 jobs through August, down from 93,000 jobs during the same period last year, according to the report. That slowing rate of job growth was consistent with many cities nationwide, including some that have seen job losses this year, like San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle.
“We are not immune from the national larger trends we're seeing across the country,” Kimball said.
Still, the report stated that the city had effectively bounced back from the pandemic.
The local unemployment rate in August 2025 was 4.9%, down from 5.6% in December 2024. Since 2019, a process of “geographic diversification” has taken place across the five boroughs, with 200,000 new jobs being created in the outer boroughs over the last five years.
That trend, the authors surmised, helped explain why the percentage of New Yorkers either with a job or actively seeking one was close to a record high, “as more jobs have moved closer to where people live.”
The EDC report follows a generally upbeat assessment this week from the New York City Council.
The City Council predicted in a December economic report that the city’s tax revenues in fiscal years 2026 and 2027 would be $3.4 billion greater than estimates made in November by the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget.
It also projected that private-sector employment would increase 2% in 2026, compared to 0.6% nationwide. But like the EDC, the City Council stated that local economic growth was uneven, with consumer spending disproportionately driven by high-income consumers, "while low-income households are strained by the elevated prices."
The positive trends were also visible in the core business districts. The city easily led the nation in office leasing, according to the EDC report, with Midtown and Midtown South finally returning to pre-pandemic levels of leasing.
And while middle-income families are moving out of the city, a rising number of recent college graduates have migrated to the five boroughs. The EDC said 565,000 young adults who graduated between 2022 and 2025 are currently working in the city, up from last year’s figure, when 490,000 workers who graduated between 2021 and 2024 worked here.
But the report expressed concern about some sectors, including higher education, which it called a cornerstone of the local economy.
Since January, the city’s education sector has lost 10,000 jobs, and the loss of federal research funding for universities, as well as heightened immigration restrictions, was likely to further affect the city’s premier educational institutions, including Columbia University and NYU, which heavily depend on international students.
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Race And Justice Unit
economy
new york city
Arun Venugopal
Arun Venugopal is a senior reporter for the WNYC and Gothamist Race & Justice Unit who focuses on issues of race and bias in our region. His reporting also tackles the topics of immigration, faith, and inequality. Arun serves as the regular fill-in host of the station's "U.S. of Anxiety" program. Arun was the creator and host of Micropolis, a series about race and identity. He is a contributor to NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. He has appeared on PBS Newshour, On the Media and Studio 360, and has been published in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and Salon. He also frequently serves as an emcee and moderator of panel discussions on race, religion, and identity issues and has been a guest host of NPR's "Fresh Air." He lives with his family in Queens.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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