For all the talk of New York’s “tale of two cities” economic divide, last week Mayor Bill de Blasio took charge of a local economy that has far outperformed the rest of the country since the financial collapse — and not just in a small corner of Manhattan, but across the city. Driven by the expansion of the technology and information sector, New York City today has more private-sector jobs than during the 2007-8 peak of the finance-driven boom years.
New York has, over the last decade, become a tech city to rival San Francisco, Boston and Seattle. And it has done so by moving away from its old reliance on the finance and legal sectors, and the industries like hospitality that rely on them. The challenge for Mr. de Blasio is continuing that trend, and making sure all New Yorkers benefit from it.
Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, can justifiably boast about New York’s rise to prominence as a “digital city.” On his watch, the technology and information sector has become the city’s second-most-powerful economic engine, after financial services. New York now has 10 percent of the country’s jobs in the “Internet publishing and web search portal” industry, up from just over 6 percent in 2007.
Surprisingly, over the past couple of years, the city’s minority populations have been among the main beneficiaries of this boom. Since 2010, the number of blacks working in computer and mathematical occupations — the Census Bureau’s term for tech-related jobs — in the city has risen by 19.7 percent, based on a preliminary analysis of new census data.
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