Post-9/11 Economic Recovery

From the Record:

N.J.'s post-9/11 boom has abated

Five years ago, after the Twin Towers fell, New Jersey seemed the logical landing place for many of the displaced companies.

It happened -- for a short while.

American Express, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Bros. all shifted employees to New Jersey in the scramble for office space after 9/11.

But the flow soon fizzled, and some companies moved back to New York.

State Labor Department statistics show that while the number of New Jersey-based financial services jobs jumped by 15,000 immediately after the attacks, 5,000 of them were gone a year later.

Some companies stayed, among them Garban Intercapital, an electronic stock brokerage now based in Jersey City, and Marsh & McLennan, which moved 1,100 employees to Hoboken.

New Jersey is now seeing a second surge, largely into Jersey City, fueled by New York's economic good times, which have pushed up the cost of office space in the midtown and downtown markets.

N.Y.C. proves pessimists wrong, remains heart of financial world

At the time, observers said the attacks would accelerate the economic downturn already under way and trigger mass layoffs and widespread business closures. They wondered if residents and companies alike would flee New York for the suburbs. They suggested that downtown Manhattan might lose its position as the center of world capitalism.

Though some of those things happened, the worst-case scenarios didn't. To the contrary, the metropolitan region – especially New York -- has returned to health, and remains a global finance center, though lower Manhattan still has a ways to go toward full recovery.

An analysis by The Record shows that 18 of the 32 larger tenants at the World Trade Center based on office space moved to midtown Manhattan.

Another 12 stayed downtown, while other prominent companies that were not tenants in the Twin Towers, such as Goldman Sachs and American Express, also stayed.

More important for New York, only a few WTC tenants fled permanently for the suburbs.
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Yet employment figures in both New York and New Jersey are now close to the pre-attack levels.

New York City's workforce, at 3.66 million, is about 32,000 lower -- less than 1 percent -- than on 9/11, and New Jersey has 91,000 more jobs than five years ago.

"I think it proves how resilient the economy is," said James W. Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. "You put New York and New Jersey together; you have got close to 8 million jobs. That's a huge, huge enterprise. So it takes a lot to derail it."