Recent Work
Fiscal Year 2024 Enacted Budget Financial Plan Analysis
New outyear budget gaps in the fiscal year 2024 Enacted Budget Financial Plan reflect heightened pessimism about the state’s economic trajectory by the State’s Division of Budget (DOB). While all economic projections are highly uncertain, the State is well-equipped to weather economic turbulence if these projections do materialize.
Overview of Fiscal Year 2024 Executive vs Legislative Budget Proposals
The fiscal year 2024 Executive Budget limits spending growth to 2.0 percent, with new spending concentrated in Medicaid and School Aid. In contrast, the Assembly proposes budget growth of 5.9 percent, reflecting additional investments in the MTA, SUNY and CUNY, and assistance for low-income renters, paid for through increased taxes on multimillionaires and corporations.
The True Cost of Tuition Hikes on SUNY & CUNY Students
The Governor’s executive budget for fiscal year 2024 aims to increase funding for New York State’s public university system, in part through sharp tuition increases. For the State University of New York’s (SUNY) four university centers, the tuition increases could result in a 51 percent tuition increase over five years. Tuition hikes of this size would represent a generational shift in New York State’s higher education landscape, moving its public universities from among the most accessible in the U.S. to among the most expensive. In doing so, these hikes could jeopardize the universities’ role as engines of upward economic mobility.
Housing Costs, Not Taxes, Drive Migration out of New York
The typical family that moves out of New York State saves 15 times more from lower housing costs than they do from lower taxes. Of the top twenty largest county-to-county moves out of New York State, annual mortgage costs are on average $18,300, or 34 percent, lower outside New York.
State Corporate Tax Cut Would Cost New York $1.2 Billion in Annual Revenue
If New York cuts its corporate tax rate this year, returning the rate to 6.5 percent, the impact on state revenue will be significant: The state will lose $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2025. Revenue losses will begin in the last quarter of fiscal year 2024, costing the state nearly $300 million for that quarter.
November Cash Basis Report shows higher than expected Personal Income Tax receipts
The New York State Comptroller this week released its November 2022 cash basis report, which documents recent trends in state spending and revenue.
FPI Statement on New NYS Labor Data and Comptroller DiNapoli’s Labor Force Report
Nathan Gusdorf, Executive Director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, today released the following statement: “Recent data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today reveal New York State added 456,000 jobs from June 2021 to June 2022, which represents a 5.1% annual increase — making New York the fifth fastest growing job market in the United States."
October Cash Basis Report shows higher than expected Personal Income Tax receipts
The New York State Comptroller this week released its October 2022 cash basis report, which documents recent trends in state spending and revenue.
Cutting Off Federal Aid to the Unemployed: States are Slamming the Recovery Effort
More than 400,000 people are poised to lose unemployment benefits this weekend as eight states withdraw early from pandemic-era programs. While $300 a week federal supplements to state benefits are not ending until September, eight states (Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming) join seventeen others who have already cut this benefit or plan to do so soon, affecting about four million recipients altogether. Supporters of these cutoffs argue that the supplements are keeping workers from returning to the workforce, leading to complaints from employers that they cannot find workers. The supplements no doubt give [...]
Economy Shows Improvement, but Employment Needs Time to Recover
Read the full report here: Economy Shows Improvement, but Employment Needs Time to Recover Several measures show signs of gradual improvement for New York residents as the state emerges from the covid-19 recession. One such indicator is the steep decline of new unemployment insurance claims, which had recently peaked in winter this year. Another such positive indicator is the continued gradual decrease in the statewide unemployment (U-3) rate, which peaked at 16.2 in April of 2020 as a result of pandemic-induced layoffs and business closures. The number of New York residents in the labor force also seems to have recovered; since [...]
FPI’s Census 2020 Hindsight in Gotham Gazette
Shamier Settle, Policy Analyst with the Fiscal Policy Institute, wrote this article in the Gotham Gazette about the census count and what the numbers mean for New York. FPI started its census work in 2018 with this report, which estimates of how much funding community based organizations would need to conduct outreach for the census count in 2020. That same year FPI also began highlighting the importance of including investments in the census in the state budget. Through their participation on the steering committee of New York Counts 2020, FPI advocated for community based organizations across the state to receive funding from the state [...]
New York State Fines and Fees Revenue Lacks Transparency, Obscures Economic Harms
New York State relies on fine, fee, and surcharge revenue to fund government operations- including the functions of the courts and state agencies providing criminal justice, public safety, and victim services. This funding is generated via a complex set of state statutes, including penal, vehicle and traffic, environmental conservation, judiciary, and finance laws and is spent through the General Fund and a bevy of State Special Revenue Funds. No one state government entity or agency is charged with comprehensively reporting on the imposition, collection, and distribution of fine, fee, and surcharge revenue. The lack of comprehensive reporting on fine, fee, [...]
State and Local Employment in New York, Cut in the Pandemic, Has Been Down for a Decade
Read the full report here: State and Local Employment in New York, Cut in the Pandemic, Has Been Down for a Decade State and local government employment is vital to our economy and our quality of life. State and local governments—and their employees—exist because New Yorkers have decided over generations that we need people who are dedicated and trained to teach our children, clean our streets, protect our communities, maintain our highways and bridges, and perform hundreds of other jobs. The number of public employees in New York fell substantially during the pandemic, by an annual average of over 55,000 [...]
Undocumented Women in NYC Particularly Hard Hit by “She-Cession”
Something different has happened during the COVID recession than is typical for other recessions: there has been noticeably more job loss among women than among men. Dr. C Nicole Mason, President of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, coined the term “she-cession” to describe this gendered pattern of job loss that is the converse of what in 2008-09 was sometimes called a “mancession.” Women of color, as Mason notes, have been even more starkly impacted by job loss, a double impact since they started in a more economically precarious position. Undocumented women are triply impacted by the COVID pandemic: as [...]
Make Care Work, Fair Work
FPI's Shamier Settle was interviewed on Equal Rights & Justice radio, WBAI 99.5 FM with Marrisa Senteno, Co-Director of the NY Chapter of the National Domestic Workers's Alliance. FPI's report, Domestic Workers are Essential Workers: By the Numbers in New York , was highlighted in this episode of Equal Rights and Justice with Mimi Rosenberg. Listen to the interview below.