NEW YORK (AP) — As kids returned to school last month, people watching New York City pull itself out of COVID-19′s shadow wondered whether workers who fled Manhattan’s office towers during the pandemic would finally return in a rush, too.
More workers
did return to their offices, at least part time, as the summer ended, limited
data suggests. But the onset of autumn has also made it clearer than ever that
the recovery will be drawn out, and that some aspects of the city’s economic
ecosystem could be changed for good.
“We’re
certainly entered a changed relationship between office workers and their
offices,” said James Parrott, director of Economic and Fiscal Policies at the
Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.
That’s meant
hardship for New Yorkers who are part of the economy built around the commuting
class.
They are the
workers whose livelihoods can’t happen over an internet connection, who have
depended on that serendipity of a customer being in the right place at the
right time — the sudden impulse to buy a snack, pop into a store, throw some
dollars into a street performer’s tip bucket.
They’re
people like Emad Ahmed, 58, who for more than two decades has worked in lower
Manhattan, running his food cart on a plaza near Wall Street and the World
Trade Center.
The pandemic
forced a pause, but as soon as he was able, Ahmed came back — and really wishes
he could say the same for all the workers he relied on as customers, many of
them still working at home and coming into Manhattan only a few days a week, at
most.
“The
pandemic (is) almost done, nobody uses a mask now, and you can go to the subway
and the bus without masks, and people still don’t come,” he said. It’s
“absolutely not like before.”
Some had
looked to the Labor Day as a possible catalyst, a transition back to the way
things were, and indeed, some data has shown momentum since then, including
office occupancy in the metro area getting closer to the halfway mark.
Subway
ridership is on an upswing, as well, with one day last week reaching almost 3.9
million riders. While that’s only about 64% of a comparable day pre-pandemic,
the weekday totals have been inching up overall since the holiday.
A survey of
Manhattan companies put out by the Partnership for New York City last month
found that on an average day, just under half of Manhattan office workers were
in their offices as of the beginning of September.
But when it
comes to being back in the office full time, only 9% of workers were, with the
largest group, 37%, in for three days a week. Sixteen percent of workers were
still completely remote.
Looking
ahead through the rest of the year to the beginning of 2023, the survey didn’t
show those numbers changing drastically, despite city government and corporate
leaders urging workers to come back.
“People have
gotten used to the flexibility and the benefits of not having to commute to the
office every day,” said Kathryn Wilde, president and CEO of the partnership.
“They’re going to have to have good reasons to go back.”
Remote work
has brought an upswing in jobs and liveliness to some neighborhoods in the
outer boroughs, as people staying close to home have brought their coffee and
other daily needs to their local outlets.
But that
hasn’t made up for what’s been lost, said Jonathan Bowles, executive director
of the Center for an Urban Future, a public policy think tank.
“In some
ways, it’s almost miraculous how much the city’s economy has recovered since
the depths of March 2020,” Bowles said.
New York
City lost more than 970,000 jobs when the pandemic hit; as of August, just
about 810,000 had come back, about 84%.
“But there
are still really large pockets, particularly around the central business
districts where entrepreneurs and small businesses are struggling left and
right ... seeing a fraction of their previous customers,” Bowles said.
Ahmed is
among them. On his best days, midweek, he sees maybe 60% of what he would have
before the pandemic. On the worst, even getting to 10-15% can be a challenge.
For some
dependent on office life, the partial return has been enough. Denis Johnston,
executive vice president of 32BJ Service Employees International Union, said
almost all of the commercial office space cleaners represented by the union are
back at work.
Whether
companies have some or all of their employees back on a given day, the spaces
need to be cleaned and maintained, so his members are needed, he said.
Some, like
taxi driver Sukhdarshan Singh, have learned to adjust. While there are fewer
commuters, he’s finding fares at other times.
“Office
people are not back, but evenings and weekends, people are out,” said Singh, a
cabbie for about 35 years.
But other
sectors are suffering. Among retail outlets, food and beverage stores have seen
only about 66% of jobs come back, while clothing stores have seen about 62%,
according to the New York City Independent Budget Office.
If office
workers are “not in the city, they’re not shopping in the city,” said Stuart
Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
“Stores are
operating with fewer people because there are fewer customers,” he said.
The city’s
unemployment rate was 6.6% in August, significantly higher than the national
rate of 3.7%.
Office
workers being slow to go back is “absolutely going to impact the bottom line
for tons of ... vendors, people that operate food trucks and so many more
businesses that are really dependent on office workers providing a big chunk of
their sales,” Bowles said.
“There are
just going to be fewer of those chance encounters, where people pick up
something to eat or drink or to bring home during their lunch hour, on their
way to work and on the way home,” Bowles said. “And that’s a surprisingly huge part
of the Manhattan economy.”
Ahmed
worries about his own future, especially as winter approaches. Even prior to
the pandemic, the cold weather was slow for business, and now he worries it will
be a financial deep freeze.
He just
holds out hope that the city streets will come back to the life they had
before.
“Nothing
else can help me,” he said. “Without people? That’s it.”