New York City has created more jobs over the past five years than during any five-year period in the last half century. But the city is not pulsing with the same boomtown swagger it radiated in past growth spurts.
What’s missing? Wall Street.
The big investment banks and brokerage firms used to form the powerful engine that pulled New York’s economy out of recessions. During the boom years of the 1990s, the high-paying securities industry accounted for more than 10 percent of all of the jobs added in the city’s private sector. This time around, it has contributed less than 1 percent.
