By Nicholas Bienstock ’06 With each shock over the past three decades, New York City has grown and its business base has diversified, allowing it to recover from each crisis faster. When New York hit a recession in the late 1980s/early 1990s, it took nine years for the economy to reach prior employment levels. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it took six years to get to that point. Following the global financial crisis—a crisis that centered around the major banks that formerly dominated NYC’s economy—it only took three years for New York to recover prior employment levels because the city was able to rely on other sectors of the economy to drive job growth. And in the years since the global financial crisis, the city’s continued growth and business diversification have been astonishing. Why has New York recovered from each crisis faster than the one before? It’s because of the unbelievable scale and diversity of the market. |