The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [14]
In that year, the birth rate began to drop, eventually thinning the ranks of young people looking for work. Projections by the New York State Department of Labor show that another 340,000 jobs will be lost between 1974 and 1985, but Bienstock does not see this as significant. Because of deaths and retirements, he says, there will be a net of 1 million job openings during this period. And fewer youths will be chasing those 1 million jobs. Bienstock also cites the city’s more competitive cost of living. “With our high unemployment rate,” he explains, “comes a low-level cost-of-living increase. Since 1967, living costs have risen faster in Houston than in New York, though ours are still higher. Between September 1976 and September 1977, New York registered the lowest increase—4.9 percent—of twelve metropolitan areas. The cost of living rose faster in the U.S.”
The Bureau’s calculations show that though the flight of middle-income residents temporarily ceased in 1976, the city’s population was expected to continue to decline; labor and welfare costs, which used to lead the nation, are now more comparable because they are rising faster elsewhere. A 1977 study by the Fantus Corporation, the nation’s largest business location consultants, showed that the earnings of industrial workers in New York were below the national average. Manufacturing wages in 1977 climbed only 4.6 percent compared to 7.7 percent nationally. New York city and state taxes have begun to inch down. In an energy-starved nation, New York’s density and vast mass transit system become energy savers. No matter what weight is given to somber facts, New York remains the world’s premier cultural, port, service and communications center. It is also true that trends suddenly change—two years ago, few predicted the resurgence of Manhattan real estate, Columbus Avenue or Park Slope.
But such optimism can become a narcotic. New York residential housing construction was up 41 percent in 1977; however, that amounted to only 7,600 units—one-seventh the number lost each year to fire, abandonment and demolition. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that by 1985 white-collar jobs will increase from 59 to 76 percent of the city’s labor force. Yet the blue-collar population, only 60 percent of whom can read at grade level (and this figure does not include Hispanics), will be chasing white-collar jobs which many will not be qualified to hold.
Except for the fools among them, the optimists do not argue that New York’s economy has been transformed. Implicitly, they’re saying that conditions elsewhere are growing worse or that the city’s decline has slowed rather than stopped. But decline continues despite the rosy efforts of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The heading on their 1977 year-end review of New York and the region’s economy, for instance, was JOBLESS RATE AT THREE YEAR LOW IN NEW YORK–NORTH-EASTERN NEW JERSEY AND NEW YORK CITY AS AREA PAYROLLS RISE 7,000; INFLATION RATE MODERATES WHILE EARNINGS SHOW RECORD GAINS. Bienstock’s summary gushed that New York City’s 9.4 percent unemployment rate was “about 2 percentage points below year ago levels, marking the first decline in four years.”
Read on, however, and you stumble upon the following:
“The job total in New York City was down over the year to a total of 3,164,000.” But, they later explain, “The 1976–77 decline was moderate [italics added] compared with losses totaling 340,000 in the 1973–76 period.”
“Factory employment in the City inched down by 3,000 in 1977 following a 7,000 rise in 1976.” But this was “a favorable development considering the 1969–75 drop of nearly 300,000.”
“In New York City, the extent of job loss was down to around 15,000 over the year by September and October, the smallest annual drops for any month since late 1973.”
“While the City’s 1977 jobless rate was below the double digit levels of each of the prior two years, it remained high relative to earlier years, and was about double the 4.8 percent rate at the beginning of the 1970’s.”
While the city lost