Justin Fox, Columnist

Some Consequences of New York City's Amazing Jobs Boom

The rest of the state -- and even the country -- hasn't come close to keeping pace.

July 27, 2017 at 4:45 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

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At the beginning of 1950, 63 percent of the nonfarm payroll jobs in New York state were within the five boroughs of New York City. For decades after that, the city's share of state jobs fell and fell and fell, bottoming out in 2003 and 2004 at just under 42 percent.

Since then, New York City has made a big comeback, while most of the rest of the state has struggled. If current trends continue (a big if that I'll get to at the end of this column), it looks like the city will be back to providing the majority of the state's jobs within a few years. Which is ... interesting.