Brian Lear on WNC.

Greg David is back with us now, contributor covering fiscal and economic issues for the news organization, the city,

and director of the Business and Economics Reporting Program

and the Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program

at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Greg's Final Article of the Year

takes stock of the state of New York City's recovery from the economic

shocks of the pandemic and with some predictions for 2024, the city is back to around where it was in the number of jobs from before the pandemic as a

little spoiler alert but there was some very New York ups and downs that will

talk about two and what Greg sees coming down the throughway or up the

turnpike for 2024. Greg, happy new year. Thanks for giving us some working

minutes on a holiday week. Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you, Brian.

Glad to be here.

And the headline of your article looks right into 2024,

but I want to take some time first to assess 2023 and maybe start on the most recent news if you've given it a look

have you seen any numbers for the holiday shopping season the New York Times headline

on this yesterday with a national angle was Holiday

Spending Increased Defying Fears of a decline and it says well the pace of growth slowed

spending stayed strong because of robust job growth and strong

wage gain. So do you know if that reflects local results as well? The New York

City economy is growing, but the whole point here is that we're not doing as well as the rest of the country. But you know, the national economy couldn't be better. I've been teaching classes about the great

mismatch between the enormous enormously strong a national economy and

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