Overview
- New York State is home to one of the largest, most thriving economies in the world; as of 2022, New York’s gross domestic product was over $2 trillion, rivaling the entire economy of Canada and larger than the economies of Australia and South Korea.
- Despite New York’s aggregate economic strength, New York faces real economic challenges, including a decrease in total employment, climbing poverty rates, and extreme income inequality:
- New York’s total employment is around 9.72 million people — a decline of 120,000 workers since the eve of the pandemic.
- The past three years have seen a rise in the poverty rate in New York to 14 percent.
- The average income of the top 1 percent of earners in New York State is about $2.6 million in annual earnings, compared to just over $49,000 for the bottom 90 percent.
New York State is home to one of the largest, most thriving economies in the world. As of 2022, New York’s gross domestic product was over $2 trillion, rivaling the size of the entire economy of Canada and definitively larger than the economies of Australia and South Korea. Though both Texas and California boast larger overall economies, New York has the highest gross domestic product on a per capita basis of any US state — surpassing $100,000 per resident in 2022.
Despite New York’s aggregate economic strength, the state faces real economic challenges. First, the Covid-19 pandemic induced a sustained decrease in total employment in the State relative to the rest of the country — in other words, while the rest of the United States has recovered and surpassed pre-pandemic employment, New York remains over 100,000 jobs below its pre-pandemic level as of the end of 2023. Second, poverty rates, which reached a 30-year low in 2020, have been climbing since the pandemic — a sign that New York faces real challenges in meeting the needs of its population. And third, New York’s income inequality remains amongst the highest in the country.