NYC's 'K-Shaped' Economy

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC will talk to business and economics reporter and CUNY journalism professor Greg David now about two big things. Greg and one of his star CUNY students have an article in The City Reporter titled Inside New York City's K-shaped Economy. He'll explain why K-shaped, and you can figure out where you are on that letter of the alphabet. And we'll get Greg's take on the turmoil in the bond market and Treasury Secretary Scott Besson's aggressive response after the national debt hit $40 trillion last month. This has huge implications for inflation potentially, for Medicare and Social Security solvency potentially, and more. On the K-shaped economy, that means one line is going up and one line is going down, right? That top line in the K is the city's uber-wealthy, the city's top 1% or about 40,700 millionaires. And they capture 53% of all income growth in the city over the last five years. Wall Street is doing its part too. According to the article, pre-tax profits at the New York Stock Exchange, member firms are on track to break records this year. The bottom line of the K is everybody else. And about one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty. To boot, that's double the national rate. Record numbers of New Yorkers are signing up for federal programs like SNAP and cash assistance.
Even, as you know, as federal cutbacks make those benefits harder to get. These numbers are official, by the way. They come from New York City Comptroller Mark Levine's office.
Greg David is a contributor to The City Reporter covering fiscal and economic issues. He's also the Director of the Business and Economics Reporting Program at the Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program, to be specific, at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. And we are also joined by Nancy Jiang, a student at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and summer intern for The City Reporter, where Greg writes, Nancy's got the byline on the article in The City Reporter called Inside New York City's Case-Shaped Economy, A Few Do Well, Most Do Not. Greg, welcome back as always. And Nancy, welcome to WNYC.

**Greg David** (2:32)
Thank you, Brian.

**Nancy Jiang** (2:34)
Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for having us.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:36)
Greg, first, you must be a good mentor because it was your idea to have Nancy come on with you for this story. So would you like to introduce us to her a little bit and why you thought her story is put it on the radio quality?

**Greg David** (2:52)
So Nancy is a student at the Newmark J School taking the business concentration, which means she has to endure my teaching.
And she was an intern at The City Reporter this summer. She also does a lot of data work. She's doing a lot of data work here at the J School. A lot of my business students do that. And I thought that she would be just perfect to do this idea. We talked a lot about the K-shaped economy in the class.
And it just became clear to me as I'm reporting on the New York City economy, that the K-shape is extreme in New York. You know, I was on the show recently to talk about how great Wall Street's doing, how great that is for the city budget and for the mayor actually, keeps his fiscal, keeps him afloat fiscally in New York. But it became increasingly clear that there was a whole other story we needed to tell here. And with Nancy's data skills, I thought she would be the perfect person to do it. And she did all the heavy lifting for this piece.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:00)
Cool. Nancy, you want to introduce yourself a little as you go through grad school and journalism. What got you interested in this stressful and much-maligned line of work?

**Nancy Jiang** (4:13)
Well, I think data journalism is a really great entryway into journalism, especially if you want to look at things from a much bigger lens. I'm interested in covering things from a systemic and investigative viewpoint. So I thought that data journalism was just like a calling for me.
But yeah, I am a student at Greg Newmark, which has been a really great experience so far. And this past summer, I spent a lot of time at The City Reporter covering stories from a data lens. This specific story really called out to me. Like Greg said, the K-shape in New York is extreme. And I'm sure it's quite large in other metropolitan cities across the country as well. But in New York City, it's definitively one of the largest in the country.

**Brian Lehrer** (5:07)