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Nearly a quarter of New York City’s financial firms will cut their in-town workforces over the next five years, according to a November survey by the nonprofit Partnership for New York City.
Overall, 13 percent of companies in the survey plan to reduce their labor force; the financial services sector showed the largest number of companies expecting to shed workers.
Wall Street firms have been moving operations and staff south and west for some time, as we reported in “U.S. Financiers: Bye Bye Wall Street” (2 Feb 2021).
Also, financial firms are investing heavily in automation and technology, enabling them to remove humans from their operations.
TREND FORECAST: As we said in previous article “STATE STREET QUITS TWO MANHATTAN OFFICES,” we see nothing that brightens the grim outlook for commercial real estate in major urban centers, especially in the Northeast or West Coast.
We have published numerous articles and trend forecasts regarding the commercial real estate sector and their implications including the plight of commercial real estate landlords, as well as city coffers, in “WORK FROM HOME = CITY REAL ESTATE DOWN” in our 20 October 2020 issue.
Also, we have documented the plight as it has worsened (“OFFICE WORKERS’ SLOW RETURN ENDANGERS LANDLORDS, CITY FINANCES,” 9 Mar 2021). That portends an equally bleak future for the shops, bars, restaurants, salons, and other businesses that form the economic ecosystems that depend on commuters.